


...and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind

by mortigi_tempo



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-25
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 17:22:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortigi_tempo/pseuds/mortigi_tempo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some labyrinths exist in the mind only, and not all minotaurs are wicked despite initial impressions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is best viewed on my dreamwidth journal: http://mortigi-tempo.dreamwidth.org/tag/and+this+great+blue+world+of+ours
> 
> Some of the important formatting features can't be displayed properly here. Wherever you read it, though, enjoy.
> 
> Images copyright Mark Z. Danielewski.

* * *

  
**P**rologue: moments before the wind  


* * *

  
Look, it's my story, okay? Maybe you heard differently, but it's _my_ yarn to spin, or whatever, and I'm telling you, it went like this:

* * *

**P**art 1: _a labyrinth without end_  


  
 

* * *

        Let it never be said that I, James T. Kirk, am one to be deterred from my duty by feelings of malaise, or whatever, but I gotta say, this place doesn't sit right with me. And hey, maybe it's just because this damn planet is apparently _the_ icy asshole of the galaxy and there've been reports of Romulans lurking around and we're all overdue for shore leave, I don't know. All I know is, I'm on edge, and I don't seem to be the only one feeling it. Bones has developed a permanent eye twitch, and Chekov's right hand seems to have been glued to the side of his phaser, ready to whip it out and let loose on the first thing that moves that isn't us. I guess now would be a bad time to introduce either of them to the patented Jimmy Kirk snowball cheap-shot, which, I have to admit, is seriously cramping my style. Even our unflappable Mr. Spock is keeping a weather eye out, for what I don't know, but he's rubbernecking between his tricorder and the horizon fast enough to make my neck hurt just watching him.  
        It's not like there's any real sign of danger. The scan of the planet we took before beaming down was devoid of any heat signatures indicating life forms, though now that I'm down here that doesn't surprise me. The fact that we haven't frozen over yet is baffling. Still, my eyes are giving me nothing, no signs that this place has ever been inhabited by anything, which makes me wonder what the hell _we're_ doing here. Clearly nothing was ever meant to live in this hellhole. I decide to say as much, anything to break the monotony of crunching snow and laboured breathing. The good doctor gives his usual scoff, Chekov stares at me pleadingly, clearly more than ready to go back to the ship, and Spock just gives me that raised-eyebrow look like I took a shit in his Wheaties or something. I've only known the guy a few months and I'm already simultaneously impressed and annoyed by how many distinct nuances of aloofness and disapproval he can convey with his eyebrows. Whatever. _I_ know I'm awesome, and as such, I feel entitled – no, obliged – to lead the march down the last hill before our target location, a lake, with my head held high and whistling something suitably military as best I can with numb lips.  
         “What the devil are we even doing here, Jim?” Bones growls at me. With the fur trim of his jacket framing his face he looks something like a disgruntled puppy.  
         “Doing what Starfleet told us to do and scouting this location out, like good little boys,” I answer, grabbing Bones by the shoulders and turning him to face me. “The _Lexington_ disappeared in this area; they think she went down here. We were in the area, so we get to freeze our asses off to find out for sure.” I speak slowly and evenly, as though to a child, and McCoy gives me a sour look that clearly tells me to fuck off before smacking his CO starts to seem like a good idea. I can't help but grin.  
          “If you're quite finished bothering the doctor, Captain, I believe now would be the time to commence our search,” Spock cuts in, head inclined ever so slightly. “Right. Commander, you do your tricorder thing over there, Chekov, you go see what's on the other side of that hill; Dr. McCoy and I will take the lake-shore.”  
          Spock nods curtly and heads off. I lean in to Bones and mutter, “Note to self: Vulcans reaaaaally don't like the cold.” McCoy scoffs and we both wince as Spock's head snaps to the side, eyes narrowing ever so slightly at us with what looks suspiciously like very un-Vulcan malice.  
         “Damn his Vulcan ears,” Bones says, one eyebrow shooting up in a distinctly Spock-like manner. I feel the corner of my mouth twitch.  
         Chekov hesitates near us a moment before scurrying off hurriedly up the hill I'd indicated for him, clearly intending to finish his task as quickly as possible before rejoining the main group. He, at least, doesn't seem too perturbed by the cold. Bones and I are visibly shivering. Spock appears physically unperturbed but he's been in an even more sour mood than usual since we got here, tossing in little biting quips whenever it seems like we might be beginning to enjoy ourselves and turn our attention from the task at hand.  
         When Bones and I reach the shore of the lake, I scan it carefully, looking for any signs of starship debris. The lake is not entirely frozen over and uneven platforms of ice mill about its surface in an ever-changing, seemingly endless maze which I trace with my eyes. It is impossible for me to tell from here whether the fractured surface is a result of impact or chemistry, and it's when I'm leaning out to gain better perspective that something jumps up and bites me in the ass.

            _It was a bullet, wasn't it?_ you might ask. _  
            A bullet?_ I'd say. _  
           That jumped up and bit you_.

          No. It most certainly is not a fucking bullet. It is, however, what appears to be a long, thin, piece of bone, the end covered with some sort of flocking. A goddamn dart. A million credit wound indeed, and yeah, I won't see a cent. I pull it out of my hindquarters with a grunt and stare at it. It's hollow. That explains why I'm suddenly feeling very woozy. It must have been poisoned, or drugged, or something, and it came from the direction in which my intrepid science officer is currently heading, completely absorbed in his tricorder readings.  
          I straighten up and try to yell - “Spo- !” - but the motion overbalances me and I tumble backwards into the lake. It turns out that what I thought was the shore of the lake was actually an overhang of ice, and so what I expected would be a short fall into shallow water and hard ground actually sent me sinking slowly downward, the shock of the cold, my heavy clothes, and the effects of the dart making it near impossible to maintain any form of floatation. I hear nothing but rushing water, feel nothing but an extreme, skin-withering cold which stabs at my eyes. Guess it's time to close them. Nothing more I can do here anyway.  
          A splash above me actually makes me jump, so resigned am I to my fate when it comes. I can see nothing but flickering light and silky black hair and one long-fingered hand reaching towards me, and everything moves in slow motion. It seems like a good idea to try to yell at him to get out, to get away, to not throw himself away for me, a man he can barely stand to begin with. I spout a trail of bubbles before what is outside rushes in and stabs cruelly at my throat and my lungs. I feel a warmcold hand tangling itself in my shirt and a sharp tug upwards through the water before everything goes silent and black.

* * *

**P**art 2: and up above aliens hover making home movies for the folks back home†  


* * *

         They tell me later how it went. Spock pulled me out of there, and he and Bones alternated between giving me CPR and taking potshots at the natives (yes, as it turned out, there _were_ natives, big fuck-off types; hairier than a grizzly's ass, apparently, and armed with spears and... I think Spock said they were like blowguns or something – it's not like I remember any of this shit). Chekov was nowhere to be found. I dunno how they got the water from my lungs, but they did, and got me breathing again and thus ready for transport. By the time anyone remembered to try to contact the ship Spock had already had to carry me several klicks and set up an emergency tent while soaking wet in the howling wind. As it turns out, it was a good thing he did, too, because the _Enterprise_ was no longer in orbit around our lovely little planet. And why is that, you ask?  
         Well, as it turns out, the rumours of Romulans lurking in the sector were absolutely true, and it seems that they had a rather significant interest in recovering the _Lexington_ before we did. Yeah. So three guesses what happened to her.  
         Anyway, Scotty had ordered the _Enterprise_ out of orbit in the interest of not being blown all to hell (a decision I fully support, for the record) which of course left us, my magnificent ass very much included, to freeze on the surface. McCoy, being a doctor and therefore probably pretty well informed on the more unfortunate aspects of that whole freezing thing, decided it'd be a bad idea if we did it and proceeded to get me nice and cozy in fresh clothes and under several blankets and told Spock to follow suit and climb in with me before we became even more hypothermic, and that if he didn't comply there was a hypo full of tranquillizer with his name on it. I wish I could've seen his face. Anyway it's not like they could have shoved me inside a tauntaun.  
         They say Chekov turned up a few hours later, scratched and lightly frostbitten and exhausted but otherwise all right. Bones gave him some frostbite salve ordered him under the emergency blankets and then we were three, all wrapped up like bizarre sausages and perfectly snug.  
         Or as perfectly snug as we could possibly be once I'd started tossing and turning with delirium, anyway. Bones couldn't for the life of him figure out what sort of poison I'd been inoculated with, and had no way of predicting what it would do to me. All he could do was treat the symptoms as they came. The first hypo, he said, had no effect. “I didn't know what to _do_, Jim,” he tells me later. “Too much more and I'd have killed you; too little and the nightmares would've.” He says that when he went outside to keep watch, the stars were cold and silent, just watching him from far out; looking, perhaps, for new stories to tell. Bones had tried to find Sol out there, some tiny indication of the familiar, but the patterns in the sky were alien. We were alone, all alone, and so very far from home.

  


* * *

  
† _And up above, aliens hover,  
  making home movies for the folks back home  
  of all these weird creatures who lock up their spirits,  
  drill holes in themselves, and live through their secrets._

  Yorke, Thom. Radiohead. "Subterranean Homesick Alien". OK Computer. Parlophone Records. 1997.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I encourage you to view this at dreamwidth for the full effect. Link in first chapter.

* * *

**P**art 4: J'ai fait cet étrange rêve... †  


* * *

        I emerge from fitful dreams, half-imagined shapes and bright swimming colours, into the dark. Dark, and that is all. It is simultaneously heavy and light, close and unimaginably vast. Imagine yourself sitting in the middle of the floor in a room without windows, lights all off. If you know the room, you can still sense its space, still feel the enclosure of the walls around you. Now imagine finding yourself suddenly in the same situation, only in a room you don't know. Everything beyond you is nothing. Everything there is is you. That's the darkness of the unknown and precisely the situation I find myself in. Even the ground beneath my feet is an uncertainty. If I stand and walk, I don't know if I'll reach an edge, whether that be a wall, or whether it be a place where the ground gives way. I imagine that last step into the abyss, my foot groping for a floor that isn't there, my entire being suspended momentarily in space before I tumble from darkness into darkness, unknown into unknown, same as before, only deadlier now.  
        In short, the place is pretty scary. Maybe that's an understatement. Maybe the place is fucking terrifying. Maybe, though, I'm not willing to admit just how scary it was. Maybe I just can't find the words to tell you.  
        In any case it's a long time before I manage to pull myself to my feet. The shaking in my knees is matched only by the pounding of my heart, the only thing audible over the sound of perfect silence roaring in my ears. I am struck by the impression that somewhere far above me, the walls of this place (if there even are walls) are fluttering in and out with my heartbeat, some strange resonance despite the fact that there is no sound and no air is moving. I'm sure that Spock would tell me that it's just my brain imposing solid and fathomable form on the unfathomable, or something similarly metaphysical.  
        Spock... where is Spock? Where are Bones and Chekov? I yell for them, but no answer. Just my voice wandering off into the distance and, I assume, dying. I figure I'm either dead or captured. If I'm dead, then this is a pretty shitty afterlife, and if I've been captured, this is a seriously effective dungeon, because I have no idea where I am or what to do to get out. Whichever way you look at it I'm pretty fucked, but there's no sense in sitting around here. I choose a direction and start to walk. The surface I'm on is completely indescribable; seemingly perfectly even, or on such a slight slope that I can't detect it even with all my attention trained on walking. I can't even tell what material it is when I bend down to touch it; it feels familiar, like wood, metal, and stone, and yet it's none of these. Or perhaps all of them, whatever; I can't tell is all that matters.  
        I don't know how long I walk. Wherever I am, it's unimaginably vast. It feels like I've gone on and on for hours but for all I know, it's only been a few minutes. I remember an old study I read once about the results of prolonged periods of sensory deprivation and wonder how long it's going to be before I start hallucinating. It's halfway through these unsettling thoughts that my nose comes into violent contact with a wall and my entire perception of the place changes. I feel like I've been trepanned; all of a sudden the infinite has become finite, and I stand there, overwhelmed by a sudden influx of new sensation. It actually makes me dizzy. Not to mention the fact that, you know, my nose really fucking hurts now. Which, yeah, makes me feel pretty stupid even if I couldn't have seen it coming.  
        Whatever, the important thing is that now I've found a wall. I start walking again, this time along the length of the wall, brushing the fingertips of my left hand against it for a guide. I'd turned right from where I'd started simply by random choice. I figure if I keep heading this way long enough, if there's an exit, I'll find it.  
        It takes me a while to realize that the wall is entirely textureless under my fingers. There is an undoubtable solidity, but the friction is minimal, and I think against any other surface my skin would have become raw and angry long ago. It's not that it's smooth, like glass or polished stone, but rather strangely insubstantial, as though it's a force pushing back against my hand and not an object.  
        Regardless of what the wall is made of, it's unnerving and I'm lonely. I start to whistle myself a song but the sound drifts eerily into nothing and just adds to my acute awareness that I am entirely solitary here. I wonder if I haven't just gone blind, if I'm not wandering around some benign, well-lit... what? Box? Spock would probably tell me that's illogical, but fuck it, this whole thing is illogical. It's probably a good thing he's not here. Were it not for the fact that the laws of physics seem to be holding so far, this place would be a firm rejection of all those neat, sensible things that he stands for and relies on and builds himself around.  
        _Still,_ I think, _I could use his help. And his company and maybe a lot of other things of his too but it doesn't really matter now, does it?_ I sigh and realize that I'm moping. Well why the fuck not? It's not like anyone's around to see, and even if they were, they couldn't. I can thrust out my lower lip and lower my brows and pout as much as I damn well please, and I do, and it's almost refreshing.  
        Even more refreshing is the hallway. I stumble across it after some amount of time, I don't know, it feels like less time than it took me to find the wall, but at the same time I feel like I've traveled further. Here it is though, a hallway, just narrow enough for me to touch both sides with my arms fully outstretched. Hallways, of course, lead to rooms, and I'm thinking, maybe a small room, maybe a room with, I don't know, a fucking light switch or something. Anything. On the other hand maybe all rooms in this place are like the one I just left and maybe I'll wander through this same odd sort of purgatory forever. I decide that I'll take that chance.  
        The hallway twists and turns, and I have to walk with my arms outstretched in front of me to keep from repeating the other wall's rather rude interjection with the well-being of my nose earlier. Just as I'm getting tired of stubbing my toes and jamming my elbows, I see something.  
        _What?_ you ask me. _What do you see?_  
        I don't know. I don't care. Just the fact that I can see is shocking enough at this point and I'm not entirely sure what to do with myself for a few seconds before I realize why I can't put a name to what I'm seeing: it's nothing. Nothing, except that the heavy blackness around me has lifted a little, just ever so slightly. I push on. Soon I can see something else, and this particular something is instantly recognisable: the outlines of my outstretched hands. Further still and there is their texture, their colour, and the walls. I can see the walls now, and the floor, and somehow it's even more unsettling than when I couldn't. The walls and the floor are the same identical non-material, and for a moment I can't walk, I can't comprehend that I'm somehow standing here when clearly _that_, that _right there_, is where my foot ends and the floor fails to begin.  
        Yeah, I know. _Huh?_ I'll try to explain in the only way I can, please just bear with me: Picture something utterly textureless, utterly colourless, completely blank in every way, just a flat surface. Except it's not even a surface. It's solid, but it shouldn't be. There's no reason for it to be. There is no_ it_, that's just convenient terminology you use in this case to keep from going completely batshit just thinking about it. Its colour is black, except that it isn't really black, it's nothing. Black is just the closest word you could find for the absence of all things. Yeah, imagine that. Wrap your mind around it. You can't, right? You see? It's no use trying to describe it to you. I'll leave it at that. Please don't ask any more.  
        Not much further on I discover the source of the light. A torch, and beyond the torch, a doorless doorway.  
        So here's my problem: obviously I'm curious about what's through the door. Obviously I'm also curious about what I've just come through, about what's behind. Yeah, I want to go see – who wouldn't? So that is precisely what I do. I figure that I'll just check out where the hallway meets the big room, then turn around and come back, no harm done.  
        The hallway is marked all the way through with the same unmarkedness as I first encountered. So, as it turns out, is the big room, which is vast well beyond what the torch's illumination can reach. I can't see a ceiling. The whole place doesn't even change with the flickering firelight – it is as though the walls and the floor are a full stop on the end of all things, the heavy black ink of a period on the end of a sentence. Something brings my torch to a full stop too as I raise it high above my head in an attempt to view the ceiling. It does not sputter or waver, simply _ends_ with a sound like a gasp, and the blackness rushes in, I can _feel_ it pouring in through my nose and my mouth and my _eyes_ down inside me like thick viscous liquid and a horrible, sickening panic grips me and I drop the remnants of the torch and run, blindly, without thinking, my mind filled with nothing but the need to _get it off_ – get what off? I don't know, whatever it is that's in this darkness that clings to me and won't let go. I run, yes, I run, and I scream, and I sweat, and I do other things that I won't be able to remember later when I need to retell them to you like I am now until finally I collapse with exhaustion and lay against the temperatureless floor and weep. Only my face gets wet. The floor is unchanged. And now I'm lost.

* * *

**P**art 5: †† "?ו'אמר משה אל–האלהים מי אנכי כי אלך אל–פרעה / וכי אוציא את–בני ישראל ממצרים"  


  


* * *

Bones tells me that I started screaming sometime around midnight.

. . . _ _ _ . . .

  
        “Spock. You have to. We have no choice! Jim could die if you don't.”

. . . _ _ _ . . .

  
        “I am well aware of this, doctor, but I cannot do what you are suggesting. As I have already indicated a mind-meld given his state could prove extremely dangerous both to the Captain and myself.”

. . . _ _ _ . . .

  
        “Damn it, Spock, this is your Captain! Your duty requires you to do everything in your power to help him.”

. . . _ _ _ . . .

        “With the Captain compromised I am the highest ranking officer left in the landing party. My duty is also here, to you and to Ensign Chekov, and as such I cannot place myself in undue risk.”

  
. . . _ _ _ . . .

        “So you'll let Jim die then. Your captain, a man you respect, who respects you, you'll let him die horribly on this godforsaken chunk of ice.”

. . . _ _ _ . . .

        “He is lost. You wish me to find him. That much is clear to you. It is clear to me also. What is apparently unclear to you is the fact that I am just as likely to become lost too. Do not ask me to do something you do not understand, Dr. McCoy. I could not begin to explain to you what it is like to mind-meld with someone in a state such as his. Your language does not have words that could begin to explain the-”  


. . . _ _ _ . . .  


        “Oh, cut the esoteric crap, Spock! You don't want to do it, fine, don't, but if Jim dies, I swear to God, there won't be a day of your life that I'll let you forget that you could have saved him.”  


. . . _ _ _ . . .

Spock took two cycles of watch duty that night, sitting out in the cold, shivering but silent. Bones says he couldn't sleep between my screams and watching the silhouette of that slumped back sitting stoic outside the tent. He said Chekov did nothing for a long time but lay in a fetal position and stare off into nothing, pale and listless. And then he stepped outside, and he said...

      “Spock.”

And there was silence.

        “Spock, I'm sorry about earlier.”

        “You were doing your job, doctor. Quite well.”

        “That doesn't make it right.”

        “'Right' does not matter anymore. Only necessary.”

There was a long pause. He said they sat together, watching.

        “Spock. Have you tried contacting the ship lately?”

        “Of course. I received no reply.”

        “I was thinking... is there any way to modify these contraptions, boost the signal somehow?”

        “To the extent that it would reach a ship out of orbit? Theoretically it is possible, but success is unlikely. We do not know how far away the Enterprise is. Nor could the power supply in these communicators handle such a modification.”

        “What about the power packs for our phasers?”

        “Adequate, but I think you would agree that maintaining as many functioning phasers as possible is imperative to surviving our current situation.”

        “We have four, and one of us can't use his anyway. Take Jim's.”

        “Actually, doctor, we have three. Jim's is at the bottom of that lake along with anything else that he was keeping in his outer coat. I found it hindering to my attempts to bring him to surface. I removed it.”

        “Even so. Take mine. I have to stay by Jim anyway.”

        “I will think on it.”

        “See that you do.”

        “Doctor. McCoy. You do realize that, supposing this works to begin with, there is a very good chance that the Romulans will pick up our signal, and not the Enterprise?”

        “I know, Spock. I know. I just don't see what choice we have.”

“Nor I, doctor.”

* * *

-› The walls are endlessly bare. Nothing hangs on them, nothing defines them. They are without texture. Even to the keenest eye or most sentient fingertip, they remain unreadable. You will never find a mark there. No trace survives. The walls obliterate everything. They are permanently absolved of all record. Oblique, forever obscure and unwritten. Behold the perfect pantheon of absence.

* * *

  
†  _j'ai fait cet étrange rêve _

_i had this strange dream___

où nous étions tous deux 

_ in which we were both_

_ massacrés par l'allégresse _

_ massacred by the joy_

_ d'un lourd sentiment amoureux _

_of a heavy feeling of love_

_ à se marteler de questions, _

_to hammer out some questions,_

_ à se crier comme il fait bon _

_to cry out as though it felt good_

_  
de rester là _

_to stay there_

_ de rester là _

_to stay there_

_  
j'ai fait cet étrange rêve _

_i had this strange dream_

_ où nous étions tous deux _

_in which we were both_

_ debout sous un ciel ténébreux _

_standing beneath a dark sky_

_ à remâcher les mêmes vœux _

_to ruminate over the same vows_

_ pris dans cette position fatale, _

_taken in this fatal position,_

_ à se crier comme il fait mal _

_to cry out as though it hurt_

_  
de rester là _

_to stay there_

_ de rester là _

_to stay there_

_ de rester là _

_to stay there_

Lapointe, Pierre. "Nous Restions Là". Sentiments Humains. Audiogram. 2009. Translation my own; any corrections or improvements would be more than welcome. Clearly much of the poetry is lost in translation. I apologize.

* * *

  
†† Exodus 3.11: "But Moses said to God, 'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?'" (Apologies if the Hebrew characters are incorrect; it's been a long time since I've used the language and in my source material the text was not very clear.) 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

**P**art 6: remember what the dormouse said†  


* * *

                When I find myself coherent once more, I know I have no choice but to find the hallway again. I don't know how I know this, as nothing about this place has suggested any solution to be found that way, but nevertheless I feel an urgency to return there which I can neither deny nor explain. It is under the yoke of this feeling that I wander, again in the dark, again numb, my sense of direction all but thrown.  
                I'm beginning to lose all hope of ever finding my way back again when a miracle happens. My foot finds something inconstant and I fall flat on my face, too stunned to stop myself in time, and my nose makes rough messy love to a hard surface for the second time in... in... as many days? As many weeks? I don't know. The timelessness of this place sort of ruins the idiom but you get what I'm after, right? (If you don't – and you really should by the way because _if_ you don't you have no capacity for logic or empathy at all, and shame on you – I'll sum it up for you: I didn't like it. It hurt. My nose is bleeding now. Fuck. All clear? Fantastic. Let's move on.)  
                As it turns out the bit of inconstancy I'd stepped on were the remnants of my torch. I could tell by the distinctly wooden clatter it made as it rolled away from me after sending me headlong, and, of course, I confirmed this distinctly annoying suspicion by picking the damn thing up and examining it. I couldn't tell much in the dark except that it definitely is my torch and it definitely is not quite right. Without seeing it I can't tell you what's wrong, but it's as though something is missing from it, even though it's here and whole and just as I left it.  
                To tell the truth the whole thing is a bit eerie, I mean, I'm beginning to get the feeling now that I didn't go remotely the right direction at all to reach this place, and yet I have, at exactly the same angle I left it. I get a weird feeling that something _wants_ me to be here, but what I couldn't say and I have another feeling that my first feeling is just me being paranoid. And hey, as you know already, it wouldn't be the first time. Of course, the last time I'd had this feeling I was right.  
                And so down the hallway again I go, carrying the dead torch with me. I don't know why. I just don't feel like letting it go again. It's the same as I remember it, even down to the growing source of light down many twists and turns until finally, there I am again, there the torch is again. Only a new torch this time. I look at the one in my hand and drop it suddenly in shock. Patches of it have turned to the same non-material as the wall. It is being absorbed back into that place. What about me? Will I change slowly into emptiness also? _Not if I keep moving_, I think. I don't know what gives me that knowledge, but I have it, and I trust it implicitly. I have no choice but to do so anyway. The idea that I might actually understand something about how this place works is too comforting to pass up.  
                  I take the new torch in hand. It's time to pass through the doorway with no door, and as soon as I do, I know what this place is: _...ita Daedalus implet innumeras errore vias vixque ipse reverti ad limen potuit: tanta est fallacia tecti._ ††  
                A labyrinth.  
                I go into it without strategy. A left turn, a right, continue straight, wandering simply by whim, whichever direction feels right. I can't tell how large the labyrinth is; it feels simultaneously very small and impossibly big. I become quickly disoriented, and I know there's no chance of me finding my way back to the beginning, but it was unavoidable... wasn't it? Did I fail to find Ariadne's thread? Uncertainty fills me. Only fear keeps me moving; were it not for that I'd give up now; slump down and surrender myself to fate.  
                  Time passes. Time and more time. I still don't know how much. Slowly, though, I notice the walls begin to change. As I progress deeper and deeper into the maze the walls perform a subtle shift from absence to substance. In fact they are starting to resemble stone and mortar, though blank and still not-quite right, textureless, incomplete. It's almost as though the place is reaching into my mind, and changing itself to reflect what it finds there. As though context is providing material instead of meaning. The semantics of matter, morphemes of substance coming together to create something that is meaningful for me, but incomplete – an interjected phrase, a poorly-constructed sentence. Somewhere, a word or two is gone. I know what the labyrinth is trying to say, but it doesn't have all the information necessary to say it properly. It's creepy. I don't like it. Maybe that's the point.  
                I turn a corner and the smell of food nearly bowls me over. I suddenly realize that I haven't eaten since I've gotten here. I haven't appeared to need to, but now, smelling all this... goddamn. My stomach growls and aches like it's been years since I've last had a decent meal. I follow the scent to its source, tables, real tables, laden with an incredible spread of food and drink. Only one place is set. It might as well have had my name on it. There's even a place to set my torch, which, of course, I immediately do and proceed to stuff my goddamn face. It looks amazing. It smells amazing. It tastes... holy fuck, it's transcendent. Only too late do I remember that Daedalus was Greek, and that I should always be wary of Greeks, even bearing gifts. Still later do I realize that this room is a dead end, and that that alone should be foreboding enough.  
                Last, and latest of all, I remember the lotus eaters, and of them are my last coherent thoughts before it all goes wrong.

* * *

**P**art 7:well i dreamed i saw the silver space ships flying in the yellow haze of the sun §

  


* * *

                Spock says that on the first try, there was no response. They moved the tent, carrying me, a few klicks away, just to be safe.

                On the second try, again no result. He says they scrapped again with the natives and Chekov nearly took the same sort of dart that was killing me. It missed, embedding itself in the snow next to him. Despite the scare McCoy says they felt triumphant: if nothing else, they now had a sample for analysis, the results of which might well save my life. Their tools were limited, but he says he was sure he could work something out. He preserved the sample as best he could and went to work. Spock says Bones was up all night looking for some answer. Bones says nothing on the subject, but Chekov says that Spock was too. They moved the tent again after the second attempt at contacting the ship.

                On the third try, the _Enterprise_ answered.

  


  
               _That you, Mr. Spock? My God, man, but it's good to hear your voice.  
_  


* * *

†   _when logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead  
    and the white knight is talking backwards,  
    and the red queen's off with her head,  
    remember what the dormouse said:  
    feed your head! feed your head!_

    Jefferson Airplane. "White Rabbit". Surrealistic Pillow. RCA Victor. 1967.

 

* * *

386 Tympanum, Dionysianism, labyrinth, Ariadne's thread. We are now traveling through (upright, walking, dancing), included and enveloped within it, never to emerge, the form of an ear constructed around a barrier, going round its inner walls, a city, therefore (labyrinth, semicircular canals – warning: the spiral walkways do not hold) circling around like a stairway winding around a lock, a dike (dam) stretched out toward the sea; closed in on itself and open to the sea's path. Full and empty of its water, the anamnesis of the choncha resonates alone on the beach. ((Translation not my own.))

* * *

†† "So Daedalus made those innumerable winding passages, and was himself scarce able to find his way back to the place of entry: so deceptive was the enclosure he had built."

 

* * *

§   _well, i dreamed i saw the silver   
    space ships flying   
    in the yellow haze of the sun.  
    there were children crying   
    and colors flying   
    all around the chosen one.   
    all in a dream, all in a dream   
    the loading had begun:  
    they were flying Mother Nature's   
    silver seed to a new home in the sun.   
    flying Mother Nature's   
    silver seed to a new home._

    Young, Neil. "After the Gold Rush". After the Gold Rush. Reprise. 1970.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

**P**art 7: if i could change to liquid i could fill the cracks up in the rocks but i know that i am solid and i am my own bad luck†  


* * *

        My first thought is _oh no_. My second thought is obliterated by a whirlwind of sensation that unbalances me, sends me sprawling across the floor which I'm too far gone to note is cold now. Were I capable I'd also realize that it's stone that's pressing into my cheek, rough and strange but undeniably stone. I can feel these things only distantly. They're unimportant next to the feelings that overtake me, incoherent at first, just flashes of light and roaring white noise and electric tingling and the taste and smell of burning, rolling intensely, all trying to overtake each other and I think I'm going to go mad when suddenly it _shifts_, becomes something else, flashes of imagery.

        A whip cracks across my back and it hurts, it sears, oh God it stings, and I grunt in pain. Won't cry out, won't cry out.

        They pour hot lead into my eyes and if I thought the whip was bad, it's nothing compared to this, these bursting black bubbles of colour and agony, and I scream and scream until that burns too.

        A too-strong hand around my throat, bends me backwards over the console, steely-gripped, long-fingered, _hot_, so hot, so _angry_, but it smells familiar, like warm skin, and this one's a memory but I've never recalled it so strongly before. I've never tried. Dizzier and dizzier and fuzzier and fuzzier and down. In this version the relief never comes, because before it can-

        I'm thrown around, picked up and tossed again, disoriented, lost, terrified, and I never see what it is, just these big rough hands, wrapping around a leg and pulling me up. Something in he joint tears but before I can register that I'm tossed again, a rock; a rock and my back is broken, SNAP, and it's louder than I could have imagined, resounding around my head, chasing the pain. I taste blood. I smell it too. Some distant version of myself lying on a strange stone floor curls up and vomits.

        They come at me with the brand, faceless, nameless, speciesless – humanoid, then not, shaped and shapeless – and I'm bound, wrists above my head, and I can only pull back so far before the skin starts to tear and the glowing red hot _thing_ meets me anyway, burning bubbling stripes across my flesh. The sound is awful and it _smells_, God, it smells so strongly I can taste it, and I know I'm crying and I can't stop because I don't know why, I don't know what I've done, and it's not fair, it's-

        I feel the tip of the blade enter my heart. Up through my ribcage just like that, not a chance, couldn't have seen it coming, I _feel_ it, and my heart, it's beating around... around... oh God, that's not right, that can't be right, that's _sick_, no, no, something's wrong, NO!

 

* * *

**P**art 8: pedaling through the dark currents, i find an accurate copy: a blueprint of the pleasure in me††  


* * *

        Fingers push their way past my lips, force my jaw open, run trembling over my tongue. They have a strange tang to them, not salty, inhuman, delicious. I can feel the whorls of a fingerprint slide slickly past my tastebuds, and a hand, another hand, tangling its longlong fingers in my hair and pulling, just enough and I gasp, my nerves on fire from the pain from before, I tremble, I want, and still I burn. I gasp: _“Spo-_” and... wait, what? What is this, and why is it so good?

        Suddenly I can tell apart all the girls I've ever fucked by the touch of their lips alone, and that's good, because they're all here. I'm blind, or blindfolded, I can't tell – it doesn't matter, I know them, I can see them in my mind, I can _smell_ them, strange bouquet, beautiful, and their lips, their mouths, their warm wet mouths, are everywhere, even in the cold stone floor, and – Gaila? God, Gaila, I thought you were dead, I thought you were gone, I'm sorry, I-

        _ Fuck_, God that's good, yes, _there_, his hands are on me (his, his, whose?) and that wicked tongue, that sharp tongue, it teases my nipple and yes, how does he bend that way? How does he do that with his tongue when I'm fucking him? Those mischievous lips – mischievous, yes, deny it all you want, but I know – curling against my chest, I can feel it, I-

        The cuffs are back, holding my arms high above my head while I'm naked here on my back in the dark and for a moment I feel a seething terror that the pain will return but instead rough-gentle hands push my knees apart and trail with tickling lightness up my inner thighs, up, up, yes, and are gone. I tremble, I have no choice but to tremble. I hear movement, up, over me, around me, but no touch comes, not yet, no words. I'm not allowed to speak. I want to speak. I want to beg but no, he said no, he said _no sounds_. So I bite my lip and wait, and wait, and just as the universe is about to end slick fingers tease and push in... in... something far away and unimportant rebels, confused, uncertain. _That's not... I don't do **that**, I never dreamed..._ but of course I had. I dreamed. And then he's there, hands gripping my waist, one side wet, the other hot and rough and dry, working hands, soldier's hands, but so graceful – and he's pushing in so slow, that fucking tease, that goddamned fucking tease and I have to bite back a sob. _"Jim,"_ his boiling summer breath gusts over my ear and that's enough, it's all been too much, and I arch, and I come, wet and half-shamefully, biting my lip, silent.

(And why am I telling you all this, you may wonder? Because you deserve to know, because I want to forget. Because I need to remember.)

 

* * *

**P**art 9: i had too much to dream last night§  


  


* * *

        According to Spock we arrived at the ship without incident. Scotty nipped the _Enterprise_ in and out of orbit in a flash, the Romulans were none the wiser, and not a scratch on her. Had I been aware of any of it I'm sure I'd have commended him on a job very well done, but as it were... well, you know.  
        I was rushed to sickbay on a gurney and once there, according to Bones, promptly began “raising all hell”. My heart rate jumped through the roof, adrenaline flooded my system, and they had to keep me in restraints so I wouldn't hurt myself, or anyone else for that matter. He says the screams were horrible, and they went on and on until they became strange and hoarse and all the more awful. At one point I vomited all over myself, and he couldn't tell if it was pain, horror, or the poison that made me do it.  
        “It must have been one hell of a nightmare,” Bones tells me. And then he gets that damn grin of his and says, “And then you had one hell of a dream,” and for once I'm the one blushing at a comment _he_ makes, and it's a reversal of the usual circumstances so I let him keep those words, and he uses them often. And yeah, I always blush. Sometimes I do more than that.   
        But fuck, he's right. It was one hell of a dream. He says I scared off some of the nurses the first time it happened, but I think he might be shitting me. They certainly won't say anything about it either way.  
        According to the medical log I slipped between agony and pleasure in cycles, without rest, for hours, and Bones was sure it would kill me. He didn't know how it hadn't already.  
        The third time I started writhing and shuddering in pain I had gone almost completely hoarse, but he could still hear me calling out names: his, Chekov's, Sulu's, Scotty's, Uhura's, Spock's, especially Spock's, begging, _save me, save me.

        Please.

_

* * *

    “Spock. He needs you. His body's going to wear itself out, he can't take this much longer. He's dying. You told me I can't ask you to do something I can't understand and you're right. So I'm not asking you to do anything at all. But I am telling you, dammit, he needs you.”

    “I understand, doctor. I am... weighing my options. And his.”

    “He doesn't _have_ any other options. This is his last chance. Spock... he's my best friend. The only one I've got. Don't make me beg you.”

    “That will be highly unnecessary, doctor. I _will _perform the mind-meld, but on one condition.”

    “Anything. I think. What condition?”

    “You do you very best to be patient and allow me some time to prepare. One hour is all I ask. Can you keep him stable for that long?”

    “I can sure as hell try, but if it starts going downhill, I _will_ come get you. You have my word, and I have yours, and I'm making sure you stick to it even if I have to drag your green ass back down here myself. Clear?”

    “I believe the appropriate response is 'crystal'. I understand. Thank you.”

* * *

        I don't remember Spock entering sick bay, serene and prepared, ready to face it, to die for me if need be – no, not to die, to go mad. I don't remember how he looked at me: calmly, Bones says, almost affectionately, if such a thing were possible. I don't remember the words he said, and Bones didn't hear them. I don't remember his fingertips coming to rest on the psi-points on my face.

        I do remember what happened next.

* * *

† _   rockface moves to press my skin  
    white liquid turn sour within  
    turn fast, turn sour  
    turn sweat, turn sour -  
    must tell myself that i'm not here.  
    i'm drowning in a liquid fear.  
    bottled in a strong compression,  
    my distortion shows obsession  
    in the cave.  
    get me out of this cave!

    if i keep self-control,  
    i'll be safe in my soul -  
    this childhood belief  
    brings a moments relief,  
    but my cynic soon returns  
    and the lifeboat burns:  
    my spirit just never learns.

    stalactites, stalagmites  
    shut me in, hold me tight.  
    lips are dry, throat is dry.  
    feel like burning, stomach churning,  
    i'm dressed up in a white costume  
    padding out leftover room.  
    body stretching, feel the wretching  
    in the cage  
    get me out of the cage!

    in the glare of a light,  
    i see a strange kind of sight  
    of cages joined to form a star  
    each person cant go very far;  
    all tied to their things  
    they are netted by their strings,  
    free to flutter in memories of their wasted wings.

    ...

    outside the cage i see my brother john:  
    he turns his head so slowly round  
    and i cry out "help!" before he can be gone,  
    and he looks at me without a sound.  
    and i shout out, "john please help me!"  
    but he does not even want to try to speak.  
    i'm helpless in my violent rage  
    and a silent tear of blood dribbles down his cheek,  
    and i watch him turn away and leave the cage -  
    my little runaway.

    ...

    in a trap, feel a strap,  
    holding still, pinned for kill.  
    chances narrow that i'll make it  
    in my cushioned straight-jacket.  
    it's just like 22nd street;  
    they got me by my neck and feet.  
    pressure's building, can't take more,  
    headaches charge, earaches roar  
    in this pain  
    get me out of this pain.

    if i could change to liquid,  
    i could fill the cracks up in the rocks,  
    but i know that i am solid  
    and i am my own bad luck.

    outside, john disappears, my cage dissolves;  
    without any reason my body revolves.

    keep on turning,  
    keep on turning,  
    turning around,  
    just spinning around.

_

    Gabriel, Peter. Genesis. "In the Cage". The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Charisma Records. 1974.

 

* * *

  
†† _   pedalling through  
      the dark currents  
      i find  
      an accurate copy  
      a blueprint  
      of the pleasure in me

      a secret code carved  
      a secret code carved

      he offers  
      a handshake  
      crooked  
      five fingers  
      they form a pattern  
      yet to be matched

      on the surface, simplicity  
      but the darkest pit in me  
      is pagan poetry  
      pagan poetry

      morse-coded signals (signals)  
      they pulsate (wake me up), they wake me up  
      (pulsate) from my hibernating

      on the surface, simplicity  
      but the darkest pit in me  
      is pagan poetry  
      pagan poetry

      i love him, i love him  
      i love him, i love him  
      i love him, i love him  
      i love him, i love him  
      i...

      this time,  
      i'm gonna keep it to myself

      this time,  
      i'm gonna keep me all to myself

      but he makes me want to hand myself over

      but he makes me want to hand myself over

_

      Guðmundsdóttir, Björk. "Pagan Poetry". Vespertine. One Little Indian Records. 2001.

* * *

  
§ _  the room was empty as i staggered from my bed  
    i could not bear the image racing through my head  
    you were so real that i could feel your eagerness  
    and when you raised your lips for me to kiss...  
    came the dawn  
    and you were gone  
    you were gone, gone, gone

    i had too much to dream last night  
    i had too much to dream  
    i'm not ready to face the light  
    i had too much to dream  
    last night

_

    Electric Prunes, The. "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)". The Electric Prunes. Reprise. 1967.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

**P**art 10: i keep the wolf from the door but he calls me up, calls me on the phone, tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up †  


  


* * *

        I wake gasping and sweating on the floor, having been thrown violently back to full and shivering wakefulness by a sudden feeling of immense dread. It's a terror with no apparent source, or, at least, none that I can find immediately. At first I think it's just a final result of whatever the fuck it was that I ate, whatever the fuck it was that had kept me sliding between heaven and hell for time unquantifiable. It rapidly begins to dawn on me, however, that, I am no longer alone, that, in fact, I can sense the presence of something immense and somehow I know that it's searching for me. It feels inhuman, and maybe it's a trace of the hallucinogen still in my system or maybe this place has just given me an overactive imagination but I sense hot creature breath whuffing down the back of my neck and I lurch upward to my feet; dizzy, weak, shaking, but undeniably alone. I remember another important thing about the labyrinth of myth, maybe the most important thing, maybe the thing I should least have forgotten: the labyrinth was made to hide the minotaur.  
        I find myself imagining suddenly the life of that beast, trapped to wander forever in this antithesis of a city, the walls like streets winding around empty spaces where buildings should be, the minotaur made to wander forever in anti-spaces, out of sight, out of reach, out of mind of everyone but himself. I imagine a massive black shape, a sick and twisted creature, closing on me, leaning out, intensely concentrated; hungry, bloodlust-eyes, a lashing tongue. A heavy beating heart somewhere under that corded muscle and thick, blunt bone which, under Minos' palace long ago, first knew the taste of blood and which yearns for it again – not out of starvation, not out of need, but out of a desire for revenge, a sharing of injustice, violently inspired empathy. It wants to make me know.  
        I can't deny it has the right, but not me, brother, not me.  
        I grab my torch and run. My legs are weak and they shudder but I succeed in making them hold. The creature is far behind me – very far, very faint – but the more distance I put between us now the better. I know it feels me moving, I know it feels the sudden rush of adrenaline into my bloodstream, the too-fast beating of my tired heart, my gasping lungs, the lactic acid burn that begins to build in my muscles too soon. I think it can probably feel every nerve cell firing, every synapse blazing up and going dark. All I can feel about it in turn is its singlemindedness, its terrible focus on me, me alone, nothing else.  
        It becomes quickly apparent that the minotaur knows this place better than I do, or at least knows some secret about navigating it that I don't, and why not? If all this is true and I really am in that long-ago place, then that poor bastard has been here a long time, alone in the dark. The labyrinth shifts again. It's undeniable now that the stone and mortar walls are just that, perfect in all qualities, imminently present and real. I swear I even see moss blurring by me, and hear faint drips of water under the rattling huffs of my own breath. It's as though the entire place is playing on some ancient cultural memory, an impossibly human conceptualization of a place of true and gut-wrenching terror. It's doing a really good job, I gotta say.  
        Maybe if I had the time I'd stop and wonder just what the hell this place is that it knows me like this. Is it conscious? Can it read my thoughts? Yes, maybe I'd ask those things in other situations. I'd think you'd forgive me for not addressing them, though, given the fact that I'm currently being pursued through this God-knows-where by the biggest, most fuck-off emperor-of-all-bump-in-the-night-nasties-type creature I've ever had the misfortune to encounter, and it's closing on me. This is worse than goddamn Delta Vega and I've already told you all about that, so fuck you. There are extenuating circumstances.  
        The best I can hope for right now is that someone's going to be at the end of all this waving a torch for me again.

* * *

**P**art 11: i will try not to worry you; i have seen things that you will never see, leave it to memory me; i shudder to breathe ††  


  


* * *

    “Spock, his heart rate is way up, what the hell is going on?”

    An impatient noise; a creased brow. “He is resisting, doctor. I suspected that he would. He is incapable of understanding what is going on and he is frightened. He flees.”

    “Flees? How can you flee inside your own mind?”

    “He is unaware that he is in his mind.”

    “What, like a hallucination?”

    “Hallucinations only engage the mind; they don't transform it. This is unlike anything I have encountered before.” Bones says he looked distracted then, intensely concentrated, and strange there with his eyes closed, hand pressed gently to my face. There was a long pause.

    “What exactly is going on in there, Spock?”

    “A labyrinth. And it seems that Jim... that the Captain perceives me as his minotaur.” He paused briefly. “Purely contextual, of course. Were it not for his surroundings I would merely be namelessly frightening, not a beast of myth.”

    “And what do you think will happen if you catch him? His heart rate is already too high, Spock. You have to pull back.”

    “I am aware of this, doctor, which is why I am not attempting to catch him.”

    “Well what the hell are you doing, then?”

    “Making a suggestion.”

    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

    “There appears to be an exit of some sort. I am attempting to guide him towards it.”

    “Through a goddamn labyrinth?”

    “Precisely as you say; it is not easy, doctor, so I would appreciate it if you were to refrain from distracting me further.”

    “Right, of course, sorry.”

 

* * *

  
        I can imagine the scene now: Bones sitting there chewing his fingernails and looking so uptight you'd think I was delivering his love-child, barely restraining himself from growling out questions and orders. He was probably thinking that he could really use a drink or five, probably worried that if he did have one and something went wrong, he'd be too fucked up to fix things and then he'd blame himself and carry that guilt for the rest of his life. Bones is a really great doctor for this reason precisely: not just because he's well-trained, not just because he's got a natural aptitude for medicine – he does, no doubt about it, but that's not why. It's because he can't stand to let patients go. It's because he takes every one he loses as a personal loss, a loss he carries heavy on those overburdened shoulders for all his life. That's why he fights for each and every one of them as though for his own life. In a way, he really is. That's why he's the best doctor and the kindest man I've ever had the honour to know, and also the shittiest soldier.  
        I have a harder time imagining Spock there, bent over me, eyes closed, long eyelashes resting lightly together, brows drawn down, mouth set grim. I can imagine his profile, those graceful ears, the too-perfect straightness of his lacquer-glossy hair, beautiful – yes, beautiful, I admit it. You must know by now anyway. Imagination fails when I try to penetrate his thoughts, glimpse into that foreign-familiar mind, and glean some sense of what he felt. He does feel, I know he does; once, not so long ago, I became privy to that information in a poorly-warmed cave on a frozen, barren planet, given me by a ghost from the future. Something worthy of waxing poetic about like I did there, because it saved my life, my ship, and my soul. It saved Spock's life, too. I wonder if he realized. I wonder if he thought about it then. I wonder if he was grateful, and if that's what made him decide to risk himself, or if it was something else entirely. I hope like hell it wasn't duty, because I hope he wouldn't think that I'd have asked him to take that risk. I hope he knows I'd send him away, because I hold him qadosh – because I set him apart (from others, from myself), and in doing so I keep him sacred.

* * *

†   dragging out your women  
    dragging out the dead   
    singing 'i miss you'   
    snakes and ladders   
    flip the lid  
    out pops the cracker   
    smacks you in the head   
    knifes you in the neck  
    kicks you in the teeth   
    steel toe caps   
    takes all your credit cards  
    get up get the guns  
    get the eggs   
    get the flan in the face  
    the flan in the face   
    the flan in the face  
    dance you fucker dance you fucker  
    don't you dare  
    don't you dare  
    don't you-  
    flan in the face  
    take it with the love its given  
    take it with a pinch of salt  
    take it to the taxman  
    let me back let me back  
    i promise to be good  
    don't look in the mirror   
    at the face you don't recognize  
    help me call the doctor  
    put me inside  
    put me inside   
    put me inside   
    put me inside   
    put me inside

    i keep the wolf from the door  
    but he calls me up  
    calls me on the phone   
    tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up  
    steal all my children   
    if i don't pay the ransom  
    and i'll never see them again  
    if i squeal to the cops

    walking like a giant cranes and  
    with my x ray eyes i strip you naked   
    in a tight little world and now you're on the list  
    stepford wives who are we to complain?  
    investments and dealers investments and dealers  
    cold wives and mistresses  
    cold wives and sunday papers  
    city boys in 1st class  
    don't know they're born  
    they know someone else is gonna come and clean it up  
    born and raised for the job  
    someone always does  
    i wish you'd get up  
    get over get up get over  
    turn your tape off

    i keep the wolf from the door   
    but he calls me up  
    calls me on the phone   
    tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up  
    steal all my children  
    if i don't pay the ransom   
    and i'll never see them again  
    if i squeal to the cops

    Yorke, Thom. Radiohead. "A Wolf At The Door (It Girl. Rag Doll)". Hail to the Thief. Parlophone. 2003.

* * *

†† i will try not to breathe  
      i can hold my head still with my hands at my knees  
      these eyes are the eyes of the old, shivering and bold

      i will try not to breathe  
      this decision is mine; i have lived a full life  
      and these are the eyes that

      i want you to remember

      i need something to fly  
      over my grave again

      i need something to breathe

      i will try not to burden you  
      i can hold these inside; i will hold my breath  
      until all these shivers subside  
      just look in my eyes

      i will try not to worry you  
      i have seen things that you will never see  
      leave it to memory me; i shudder to breathe

      i want you to remember

      i need something to fly  
      over my grave again

      i need something to breathe   
      baby, don't shiver now  
      why do you shiver now?

      i need something to fly   
      over my grave again.

      i need something to breathe

      i will try not to worry you  
      i have seen things that you will never see  
      leave it to memory me; don't dare me to breathe

      i want you to remember  
      i need something to fly  
      over my grave again

      i need something to breathe   
      baby, don't shiver now  
      why do you shiver?

      i need something to breathe

      i want you to remember

      Stipe, Michael. R.E.M. "Try Not to Breathe". Automatic for the People. Warner Records. 1992.


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

**P**art 11: i've seen devils come up from the ground; i've seen hell upon this earth †  


  


* * *

        No matter how far I run, or how hard, or how stumbling my steps become, there's nobody there to wave a torch for me, nobody there to save me. I've long since lost track of the path I've followed 'til now, and my strength is flagging horribly, but still the thing closes in on me. The air in my lungs is sharp and painful, reminding me all too well of a certain frozen lake into which I'd fallen earlier. What had happened since then? I remember nothing about how I got here, only what has happened since I woke up on that strange not-floor in the dark. Even these memories are starting to blur together as exhaustion catches up with me.  
        It's not long before I crumple, my legs suddenly unwilling to carry me any further. I pick myself up shakily but only manage a few more metres before collapsing again, and this time my arms are unable to lift me. I'm too weak, too goddamn weak, and it's a feeling I've never quite experienced before. I've been exhausted before, sure. I've been sick and I've passed out and any number of things, but never before have I pushed my body to its absolute limits like this. I'm kind of sickened by how weak I am, actually. I'm a starship captain. I'm supposed to be better than this. I'm not. This is where I am, and where I'll die. I've just got to accept that.  
        Yeah fucking right. You didn't actually fall for that bullshit, did you? Like hell I'm going to let this thing take me without a fight. I roll onto my back and hold the sputtering torch in front of me. I'm lucky my falls didn't extinguish it entirely, probably the best luck I've had in this place yet. Hey, maybe things are turning around. Maybe I can take this guy. (_Unlikely, Captain._ I know. Don't give me the odds.)  
        I can feel the creature drawing closer. Its presence weighs on my chest like a pressing-ghost, a demon, an incubus. An incubus? Weird impression. That's the mythology, I guess. It weighs also on my mind, sending it sparking in a mad panic, half-formed thoughts jumping through my mind. It takes significant effort to hold on to the last few threads of coherence, threads which are quickly wearing through. I wonder when I'll begin to hear the minotaur's footsteps. What will they sound like? Will they be hooves thundering as it bears down on me? Or worse, will they be padded feet, a dry scrape-slap as it stalks along these corridors to where I now rest?  
        Maybe I'm just dreaming the echoes of Innsmouth. In any case there's nothing to do but wait and see. The closer the creature gets, the heavier the air around me feels. It seems as though my torchlight is not reaching as far as before, as though the creature's presence is negating light itself, or drawing it in like a black hole. I feel myself start to breathe in sucking little gasps, and I know that sweat is beading on my forehead. It's close now, oh God. Nothing to do. Nothing to say. Nothing to hope.  
        It rounds the corner and it's even more horrifying than I had imagined. Strange and inconstant, there's nothing I can say about it that would be completely true except that it's dark. True dark, the most complete absence of light that I've ever seen. It gives off odd half-formed impressions, disturbingly comforting as often as they are terrifying. Its shape is humanoid and then not, familiar and then foreign, wavering and shifting constantly. It leans closer and I can almost discern a sort-of face on its sort-of head (I'd like to see you describe it any better than that); its mouth opens and I think, _This is the end. I'm going to be sucked up and extinguished into nothingness, like this place._ Is that it? Is this place made of the nothing that's left when you suck all the meaning out of people? Am I to become, for lack of a better term, just another brick in the wall? I'm too stunned and exhausted to even think to raise the torch.  
        Instead of killing me, though, the creature croaks and gurgles. It slowly dawns on me that it's trying to speak to me but I can't understand. It reaches out one indistinct limb and I flinch, and the limb drops almost – and I'm not sure how I get this impression – regretfully. Sadly. I suddenly feel a wave of horrible nostalgia for no reason that I can put my finger on, and the thing retreats, disappearing again around a corner and I feel it pull away. I'm unable to say or do anything.  
        I'm too tired to wonder why, too tired to stay awake any longer, and I pass slowly into that floating place between sleeping and waking, where the lightness and silence are merciful and welcome.

 

* * *

**P**art 12: in the deep, deep sleep of the innocent, i am born again ††  


  


* * *

    “Spock! Spock, what the hell are you doing? His vitals are off the chart. You have to stop.”

    “I am attempting to communicate with him, doctor, but I do not think he can understand me.”

    Bones says a strange look crossed Spock's face then, almost pained, as he broke the meld. He says that my eyes opened, and I let out a strange, indescribable noise - “!” - before my eyes fell shut again. That's when the alarms went off.

    “Shit! Shit, his heart stopped. Nurse!”

    I reviewed the video records in the ship's computers while I was recovering. They show Bones shoving Spock aside, which he attests to doing. He also tells me how he fought to get my heart started again when it was clearly unwilling, and how hard it was to see me like that, damn near dead, all lax and unresisting. What he doesn't tell me about, what nobody tells me about, but what the cameras picked up, is Spock standing there, shunted to the side, looking startlingly blank, even shocked. It's all caught on a few seconds of video that I reviewed over and over again in my bed in sick bay, rewinding and rewinding, squinting, trying to glean just the slightest hint of explanation or meaning: Spock brings his hand up and stares at it for a long moment, eyes horrifyingly dull, before something in his expression crumples even as it is unmoving, and the hand drops. That's all. Just a few moments, but they haunted me all through my recovery. I dreamed them, over and over, I obsessed, I ached. What had he seen in his hand, in my head; what did he think he had done? Most importantly, what hurt?

* * *

    “Doctor.”

    “Don't sound concerned or anything. He's fine, relatively. He's sleeping. None of the brainwave activity we saw before.”

    Bones says Spock's voice was sharp: “My expressing concern will have no effect on the Captain's situation, and I consider it best if one of us, at least, remains level-headed.”

    An exhausted chuckle. “Touché. Look, Spock, when... if... the hallucinations or whatever you said they were start again, I want you to try the mind-meld once more.”

    “Doctor, I...”

    “You said you were close, just a little longer; please, you've got to try.”

    “I... do not know if I am capable.” McCoy says the expression on his face was frightening. (“It was as much of an expression as the man ever gets – you know how he is – but there was something about it that just chilled me to the core. I don't know what he saw in there, Jim, and he certainly won't talk about it, but I swear to you that he was scared. You know what it takes to ruffle those perfect patterns of logic in that head of his. I don't think I've ever felt for the bastard more.”)

    “What do you mean, not capable? It worked the first time, didn't it?”

    “It was taxing and the Captain resisted most strongly. I am weary. I do not know if I will be able to enter his mind again, or what it would do to him if I did. Last time I also had the benefit of surprise – he will be expecting me this time.”

    “So you're saying...”

    “What I am saying is that it may not be possible for me to meld with Jim again without causing damage to him... or to myself.”

    “But you'll at least try?”

    “I admit I am... reluctant. I do not see that we have another choice, however, unless your search for an antidote soon becomes fruitful.”

    “And it won't, unless we're lucky. I've never seen a compound like this before.”

    “Then we are both out of our league, doctor.”

    “Yeah... yeah, I guess we are.”

    Bones says there was a long pause.

    “Spock.”

    “Yes?”

    “Thank you. For trying, I mean. I didn't get a chance to say it before.”

    “One does not thank logic, doctor McCoy.”

    “That wasn't logic and you know it. You did it because you cared.” He says he couldn't help but grin despite the fact that his best friend lay in a hospital bed a few metres away and all that sappy stuff. “But you don't have to worry. I won't tell anyone.”

    “I am relieved. It would be unbecoming of the ship's surgeon to spread such slander regarding a superior officer.”

    “But you do care.”

    “Doctor. It is my duty to do what I can for the captain.”

    “Oh, of course. I believe you.”

    “Somehow I do not think that you are being truthful.”

    “Sharp as ever, Mr. Spock. Now go get some rest. I'll call you if we need you.”

    I watched the video of him leaving sick bay too. He didn't look back but some part of my brain thought it detected the slightest change in the angle of his posture, as though he were leaning towards the bed where I lay prone, drawn to it like the light in my head was drawn to the black hole monster of his mind.

* * *

† i am the only one that got through  
  the others died where ever they fell  
  it was an ambush  
  they came up from all sides  
  give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves  
  i've seen devils coming up from the ground  
  i've seen hell upon this earth   
  the next will be chemical but they will never learn

  Yorke, Thom. Radiohead. "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)". 2009.*

* * *

  
†† in the next world war,   
    jackknife juggernaut,   
    i am born again.

    in a neon sign  
    scrolling up and down,   
    i am born again.

    in an interstellar burst,   
    i'm back to save the universe.

    in the deep deep sleep  
    of the innocent,   
    i am born again.

    in a fast german car,  
    i'm amazed that i survived -   
    an airbag saved my life.

    in an interstellar burst,  
    i'm back to save the universe.

    in an interstellar burst,  
    i'm back to save the universe.

    in an interstellar burst,   
    i'm back to save the universe.

    Yorke, Thom. Radiohead. "Airbag". OK Computer. Parlophone. 1997.


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

**P**art 13: come down from the mountain: you have been gone too long †  


  


* * *

  
        When I come to my torch has nearly died; I wave it desperately, sending it sputtering reluctantly back to life, but I know it likely won't last much longer. My legs are still exhausted and shaky, but they work. I feel feverish and weak, though, and my chest feels like it's been kicked by a horse. I can't think of anything in what had occurred earlier which would explain the sensation and it worries me. What worries me more is that I'm shockingly alone. All traces of the creature are gone, and I feel perversely lonely. Even horror was better than emptiness.  
        I think of the minotaur. Obviously I'm calling it that more out of lack of more convenient terminology; as I described earlier, it isn't (wasn't?) a minotaur in the true mythological sense. I wonder what it had tried to say to me. Its failure to communicate makes me feel pity, and isn't that just like me? Isn't that perfectly James T. Kirk, to patronize something that could, I'm beginning to suspect, have killed me with a thought if it wanted to? Let it never be said I'm unaware of my own propensity for arrogance, not that they're avoidable. I think it's pretty safe to say that in a lot of senses, I am pretty damn awesome.  
        Of course, it doesn't matter now that I'm trapped in this place, weak and starving (and oh boy does that bring back memories – the smell of death, corpses and corpses, shaking limbs, thin faces, ever-pained stomachs, an all-too-logical man reaching out a gentle, fatherly hand which twists the arm of the world 'til it screams uncle, uncle!), and painfully alone. I must be far gone if I really do prefer the company of a monster to that of myself.  
        You'll understand my bizarre relief, then, when I'm plunged suddenly into that too familiar terror, like jumping into ice water. Relief, yes, because it means that at least one person (thing, force, creature, whatever) hasn't forgotten me.  
        I can feel it closing, slowly, haltingly, as though testing me. I decide to play along, retreating down the path along which it is driving me. I figure that if I stay here, it'll either kill me or I'll starve to death. It could easily be driving me to some place where it'll trap me and slaughter me horribly, but logically I have no good reason to remain where I am. The odds don't look so good either way. I still don't believe in no-win scenarios, but I gotta say, this strange sojourn has been going downhill ever since it started. Sure, there were brief inclines, but the general trend has been down, down, down.  
        My pace is not very fast. I don't want to risk running again, and my steps are uncertain and shaky, but I don't seem to need to maintain a high speed to stay well ahead of the creature behind me. The longer it's here, the more I can feel its presence, sharpening and defining, scraping at the back of my mind in an unscratchable itch. The terror is becoming bearable, swallowable, if not conquerable, but the presence never leaves.  
        It takes me some time to notice the change in my surroundings, so subtle and slow is it. In fact at first I'm certain that I'm merely imagining that the press of darkness at the edges of my torch's light is waning. I know that darkness is merely the absence of light, that light is the real and the energetic in this dichotomy, but after so long in this place it feels more to me like light is the absence of dark – illogical and strange, but the blackness in which I have wandered almost seems to have mass, as though it is something living that shies away from the light rather than an emptiness that is filled by it. If I get out of this, I wonder if there'll ever be another day on which darkness does not feel dense.  
        The light grows stronger, though it is still incredibly faint, even when I find its source: a simple wooden door set into the wall, light filtering between it and the jamb in a hazy rectangle. Dust drifts past in its rays. Dust? There was never dust before. I feel the creature behind me, closing fast now. I have no choice. My hand closes over the doorknob. It is smooth and cold, and I am frozen for a brief moment in abject fascination at the sudden familiar tactile sensation after so long in absence and unfamiliarity. It turns easily. The door creaks. The light from outside is blinding to my dark-dilated eyes but I drop my torch and step through anyway onto...  
        Onto the creaking porch of my tiny old family home in Iowa. Sensation floods into me and I'm reeling. The smell of grass is heady and sweet, a cool breeze is drifting lazily past me, running fingers through my hair, everything is green and alive, and there's a riot of insect and avian noise thrumming in my eardrums. Loud, God, it's loud. I feel like I've been underground for years, but now I'm out. I'm free.  
        The knob of the door turns behind me and my stomach drops. I whip around, shaking, hand searching for any sort of weapon, heart pounding sickly in my chest. The door opens slowly, and there on the limen stands the monster, shifting and black, but as he steps through, as the light hits him the dark melts away until the only blackness left is that familiar shock of glossy hair and those sharp brows and those deep deep eyes, and oh. I'm not generally one to wax poetic about people but it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I'm sure it's just relief.  
        “You-”

        “Jim. Yes.”

        “But why...?” (There are a lot of whys. I figured I'd best sum them all up in one. He'd understand anyway.)

        “Initially I was as lost as you, Captain. The only way I could navigate that place, find you, was to become a part of it. That is why I appeared to you as I did.” Calm. Serene. Pleased. The feeling was contagious.

        “So you knew the door was there all along. You were trying to free me. And this... this is not real?”

        “Indeed. This is all a fabrication of your mind, and a most fascinating one at that. I can only speculate as to how the poison caused such intensely mind-transforming hallucinations, or why your mind chose these settings in particular to ensnare you in. I am quite pleased however that I succeeded in guiding you here. I admit the situation had confounded me for a while.”

        “Oh?”

        “Mm. Not for long, of course.”

        “Of course.” I can't help but smile.

        “Shall we return you to your ship, Captain?”

        It's him, it was always him, and Spock and I stand there in front of a blue house in Iowa until my eyes open to blinding clinical lights and Bones is there looking startled, terrified, grateful, and Spock's fingertips are desert-hot on my face.

* * *

**P**art 14: while you are away, my heart comes undone, slowly unravels in a ball of yarn ††  


  


* * *

        If you were to review the sickbay vid recordings of that time, you'd see the following:

  
1\. Spock breaking the meld just in time for Bones to sweep me up in a shaky hug – neither doctorly nor necessarily safe but I couldn't argue at the time, only sit there limp and stunned at the sudden press of a warm body against my own.  
2\. Nurse Chapel rushing over to kiss me sloppily on the cheek before frantically hailing the bridge – “He's okay, the Captain, he's all right, he's alive!”   
3\. Bones wiping away a tear as surreptitiously as possible (not very) before telling me that if I'd died, he'd have killed me for being so damned insensitive and inconsiderate of the feelings of my crew, particularly my chief surgeon.  
4\. Spock standing to the side awkwardly, head bowed, forgotten, unable or unwilling to add to the deluge of emotional outbursts currently directed my way.  
5\. My hand reaching out to brush Spock's arm. 

        You would not, however, see these:

1\. The sudden overwhelming rush of love and gratitude I felt for a better friend, a better brother than I could have asked for.  
2\. The thickness in my throat when I realized that they must have been sitting there on the bridge, all of them, worrying for me.  
3\. The pang in my heart when I heard in his voice the fullness of what my death would have done to him.  
4\. My attempts to remind Bones with my eyes what Spock had just done, what he deserved.  
5\. My mouth and my eyes and my heart and my mind opening to try to say _thank you__, you alone have saved me_ in as many ways and languages as I knew, and more.

  


* * *

  
        The official records say that my recovery was quick and uneventful. They are right about one of the two. It was definitely uneventful. I have already explained how I passed the time in part. The time not passed that way was divided more or less evenly between heavily sedated unconsciousness (when Bones tells you to shut up and get some rest you'd better do it, particularly after the toxin you were inoculated with has cleared itself from your system and he can hypo the hell out of you without risk of interaction) and annoying the hell out of everyone in sight. I told the most illogically bawdy jokes I knew to Spock, rearranged half of sickbay before McCoy threatened to hypo me again, flirted shamelessly with Nurse Chapel then suggested a threesome with Uhura the first and only time said communications officer deigned to pay me a visit, and I teased Chekov 'til his ears turned pink. I also thanked them all, every damn one of them, for coming back for us, for healing me, for doing such a damned commendable job while I was out of order as to make the necessity of my return questionable, for caring for this off-kilter fuckup from the Iowa boonies.  
        I know I don't deserve them. I always knew but I think I realized it fully then, knew only just then that they were a better crew than I could have asked for or dreamed of, that I loved every last one of them, that in a way they were my family, and this ship my home more than that lonely blue house back there on Earth had ever been. And now I was back.

* * *

† come down from the mountain: you have been gone too long   
  the spring is upon us, follow my only song   
  settle down with me by the fire of my yearning   
  you should come back home, back on your own now

  the world is alive now, in and outside our home   
  you run through the forest, settle before the sun   
  darling, i can barely remember you beside me   
  you should come back home, back on your own now

  and even in the light, when the woman of the woods came by   
  to give to you the word of the old man   
  in the morningtime when the sparrow and the seagull fly   
  and johnathan and evelyn get tired

  lie to me if you will at the top of beringer hill   
  tell me anything you want, any old lie will do   
  call me back to you

  back to you

  Fleet Foxes. "Ragged Wood". Eponymous album. Sup Pop Records. 2008.

* * *

357 Whoever you are, go out into the evening/ leaving your room, of which you know each bit;/ your house is the last before the infinite,/ whoever you are. (Translation not my own.)

* * *

†† while you are away  
    my heart comes undone  
    slowly unravels  
    in a ball of yarn  
    the devil collects it  
    with a grin  
    our love  
    in a ball of yarn.

    he'll never return it,  
    so when you come back, we'll have to make new love.

    he'll never return it,  
    so when you come back, we'll have to make new love.

    Guðmundsdóttir, Björk. "Unravel." Homogenic. One Little Indian Records. 1997.


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

**P**art 15: remember when i moved in you and the holy dove was moving too and every breath we drew was hallelujah? †  


  


* * *

        Why sex? Why do all stories go there, in one way or another? Well, I don't know about other people's, but my stories always go there because I like it, and not for the reasons you might think. Okay, not just for the reasons you might think. I can't be deep all the time.  
        Really though sex is a universal constant for everyone but monks and tribbles – the former being an exception most of the time, the latter all of the time, and yeah, there are other examples, but these do the trick. What I mean is that it's something that nearly everybody understands, on a visceral level. On a lower-than-visceral level. I can tell you fantastic tales of all the adventures I had, in space, on new planets, in my own head, but that's all cerebral and largely meaningless and could just as easily be a fabrication. You can't fabricate sex. Maybe the partners and the locations and the situations and the impossibly complicated positions are a lie but really, you can't bullshit sex. You just can't.  
        Maybe where this story goes next is irrelevant. Fine, don't listen. But know this: if there's a single grain of truth in my story (really there's more than that but we're speaking figuratively here), then this is it, this single bit of pornographic retelling, that's my most honest offering – because, let's face it, sex is the most honest and real thing any of us do anymore. I'm through with all this talk of metal and stone and synthetic compounds and hallucinogens and poisons and spirit quests and space ships and sickbays and structured social interactions and clothing. Especially the clothing. Off with the shirts! Down with the underpants! It's time to free ourselves from our enslavers and dangle proud and free!  
        Basically what I'm getting at is that I've had enough of the manufactured. It's high time that I've talked about something true and organic and very very tasty. Time we bit into some juicy apples, metaphorically speaking, and for once not give a shit that our faces got all sticky and that we look pretty stupid. Time we indulged in some good, true, old-fashioned hedonism. Time I talked about passion in all its pains and glories (more of the former than the latter but sometimes pain is a Very Good Thing, emphasis deserved). Time we triumphed.  
        To shorten it even further, in the battle between the real and the plastic you might prefer the plastic, but me, I choose the real, and I'm not afraid to tell you all about it if only you'll listen.

* * *

        Let it never be said that I, James T. Kirk, am one to be deterred from my duty by feelings of malaise, or whatever, but I gotta say, this... this is fucking great. That's the problem. There should be nothing remotely this awesome about being squeezed in a Jefferies tube with my first officer while Scotty barks instructions at us. When I said I wanted to know more about my ship I didn't think it'd mean getting quite this intimate with either starship or second-in-command. Like I said, though, I'm not complaining, despite the fact that Spock is pressed against my back and the heat radiating off his Vulcan skin is making me sweat. It brings back sleepy memories of barn cats and I have a strange urge to scratch behind Spock's ears. Aren't Vulcans descended from felinoid apes, or something like that? I wonder if he'd purr. Wow, I hope he can't read my mind right now. I mean, we're not really touching. Just through clothes. Does it work that way?

        “It would behoove you to pay attention, Captain,” Spock says suddenly from directly behind me.

        Shit. Right. As he says it his breath gusts over my ear and I'm suddenly struck with the completely irrational thought that the only thing better than being stuck in a Jefferies tube with my first officer would be to be having sex in a Jefferies tube with the aforementioned, not that there's a dearth of more appropriate locations on this ship. Like my cabin. Or his cabin. Or both of our cabins in sequence. Oh man. I really hope he can't feel my heart throbbing (much less the other parts of me that are beginning to mirror that activity – good thing he's behind me). He can probably _hear_ it, damn his Vulcan ears. I fumble with my task, unable to remember what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

        “Captain, while whatever you are fantasizing about is undeniably pleasant to you, now is hardly the time. Mr. Scott is waiting.” His voice is dry and unamused and his breath caresses the back of my ear again, raising gooseflesh on my arms and causing my knees to go weak.

        “Ohhh, you're doing that on purpose,” I hear myself whine, slightly breathlessly. Definitely didn't mean to say that out loud. I can sense the eyebrow that's just been quirked behind me without seeing it.

        “To what exactly are you referring, Captain?”

        “Nothing. Nevermind. None of your damn business.” Smooth cover. Really smooth. And now my hands are shaking.

        There is a long pause while I fiddle with... whatever that is again, I don't know anymore, and I don't really care anymore either, truth be told.

        “Are you feeling unwell?” he asks finally.

        “Yeah, I... I guess I am.” Nope. Not at all. Feeling really well. Let's just stay here forever. As soon as Scotty goes away we'll... oh no. Not going there.

    “Perhaps you should visit Dr. McCoy?”

        He sounds subtly worried. Great. Last thing I need right now is him analysing me, and I admit I also feel a little guilty for upsetting him. “No, no... it's nothing serious. I'm sorry. I'll try to pay attention.”

        “Very well.” He sounds suspicious and I bet he's expecting me to drop right out of the Jefferies tube at any second, which I'm not exactly in danger of doing. Not really. _Flee_ right out of the Jefferies tube maybe; drop not so much.

        Lord knows how I manage to finish my task with a raging hard-on and the giddiness to match it, but I do, and I may even have retained something of what I was supposed to be learning. I retained a lot of what I wasn't supposed to be learning – the feeling of a lean Vulcan body pressing into my back, all hipbones and taut muscle; the caress of hot gusting breath whenever Spock spoke; the lightest brush of dark hair against the inside of my arm as I reach back to grab something behind me, and the way it leaves my arm tingling for far too long (tingles again as I think of it, just there near the crook of the elbow, the skin crawling as though trying to reach out for more). Walking to my quarters is kind of a nightmare when I'm desperately hoping not to pass any crew members in the hall. If that's not possible I'll just settle for them remaining violently ignorant of my crotch's current state of unrest. In fact, forgetting its existence would be nice. If only I could do the same.

        Needless to say, as soon as I'm back in my quarters I hop into the shower and whack off. I am, after all, only human. Only human, uninteresting, too male, too outside regulation, too annoying. The self-pity that wells up as I watch my cum swirl down the drain is interrupted by a light knock at the door, which makes me jump.

        “Yes?”

        “Captain, I'm sorry to disturb, but I would like to speak with you when you are finished.”

        Oh boy. I shut off the stream and towel myself off, wrapping the cloth around my waist when I've finished. I poke my head out the door. Spock is standing stiffly in the middle of the room, waiting. “Um... I didn't bring any clothes in with me, so if you could...”

        “I see.” He turns around. I fumble around in my drawers, pulling out articles of clothing and tugging them on as quickly as I can. I'm rummaging through my shirts when I hear: “Curious.”

        “What's curious?” I ask, pulling on a clean uniform top.

        “Your modesty. You are not this way around women, or so I hear.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?

        “What're you getting at?”

        “Most humans express more shame and nervousness around the object – or objects – of their desire than around those they feel no attraction to. You seem to be an exception.” Man, if only he knew. He'd probably throttle me again.

        “Then again,” he says thoughtfully, “you are an exception to many rules.” I try not to take it as an insult.

        “Uh-huh. Well. What'd you come to talk to me about?”

        “I came to see how you were feeling. Your behaviour earlier was most peculiar. Perhaps you have not fully recovered from your ordeal?”

        “No, it's not that at all. I'm fine. I was just... distracted.”

        “So I noted.” I swear he's smirking at me, the bastard. God, this is awkward. “In any case if you are certain that you are feeling well...”

        “I know Bones told you to drag me up to sick bay at the first sign that I'm not doing well, but that's not necessary in this case, I promise. I'll tell him you did your job.”

        That seems to satisfy him. “Very well, Captain.” He doesn't leave, though, like I'd expected. Just keeps staring at me.

        “Do I have something on my face?”

        His hand reaches out and grasps my chin, thumb brushing over my lower lip. “What-” I can't get the rest of my question out; even this is choked.

        “You have rather full lips for a male. Quite unusual. The way they move when you speak, also most distinct.” He sounds far away.

        “You've been watching my lips?” _'Scuse me if I sound incredulous, Mr. Spock, but I thought you didn't like me,_ I think, still too shocked to pull away.

        “Is it not my duty to observe you?”

        “Observe my behaviour maybe but this is going a little far, don't you think?” 'Cause I don't. Oh boy.

        “Perhaps.” He sounds uncertain but his eyes remain fixed on my face. They're too dark, too intense, I can't stand it. His thumb is hot against my lips and I suddenly wonder what it tastes like, and God, I can't help myself. My tongue darts out almost of its own volition to swipe lightly at the clean, dry flesh. The flavour is unexplainable; like warm skin, if that skin belongs to a Vulcan. There is no salt, as there would be on a human. Vulcans don't sweat, of course.

        Spock's eyes flare wide for a moment and he inhales sharply and as he pulls his hand away I see it shake faintly. Oh fuck. “Jim.” His voice is strangely rough. It worries me.

        “Spock, what... what brought this on? Why now? What's wrong?”

        “I almost lost you.” Thoughtful voice, distant eyes, though they remain focused on my mouth. If I didn't know any better I'd almost say they looked hungry. “In that place, when I chased you down. I nearly killed you with fright.”

        “You reached for me.”

        “I could not bear the thought that you were afraid of me. I remembered...”

        It dawns on me suddenly. “Spock, you thought I was afraid of you because of that time on the bridge?”

        “I nearly killed you then too.”

        “I nearly deserved it.”

        “That does not make it right.” His voice is suddenly sharp, angry. “I am ashamed that I lost control... and I am ashamed that I am ashamed.”

        “Spock...” I don't know what to say. There's a long pause. We both stare at each other, and back in time.

        “Spock. What does this mean?”

        “What do _you_ mean?”

        “This. Here. Now. What does it mean?”

        He regards me silently for a moment, eyes flickering over my face as though searching for something. “I believe it means that I would like to kiss you, unless you have any objections.”

        “Pinch me.” I think I must have fallen and hit my head in the shower. I'm probably in a biobed in sick bay hallucinating again. Bones is going to give me hell when I wake up.

        “I'm sorry?” _Puzzlement looks good on Vulcans_, I think. _Probably because it's so rare._ Definitely something wrong with my head.

        “Pinch me. I think I'm dreaming.” Spock looks scandalized.

        “You think I am a hallucination?”

        “Why not? You have been before. Don't you remember?”

        “Indeed I do not.” I like that little frown. It looks tasty. I want to eat it right off his face. I pinch myself, since it didn't look like he was going to do it any time soon. Definitely... ow! Definitely _not_ dreaming.

        “Okay,” I say cheerfully. “I'm awake. No objections.”

        Spock clearly still thinks I'm batshit. “Perhaps I should take you to Dr. McCoy...”

        “No! No, God no, I'm fine. I'm great. Really.”

        “... because I would hate to think that I am taking advantage of a sick man.” I swear to God he's smiling. Just a tiny bit. Just at the corners of his mouth and his eyes. It practically qualifies as a grin for him though and it's wicked.

        “Spock, shut up and kiss me already.”

        “As you wish.” His voice is mild. His kiss isn't. No, it's all shockingly hot mouth, soft lips, hesitant tongue, and concentrated silence. I can't tell if the rate of his breathing has increased but a strong hand tangles itself in my hair, tugging lightly, and I can't help a low moan. It goes without saying that I'm hard again, in spite of my recent one-handed acrobatics. God, what this man can do to me. I wonder how long he's been able to do it, how long it'd been before I noticed, before I admitted to myself that it might be true.

        Spock's mouth leaves mine to explore my jawbone, and I stammer out: “Hey, so I thought, um, that Vulcans didn't do this... you know, this sort of thing.” I open my eyes and am treated to the sight of the tips of one of his ears flushed green, and they roll back into my head and shut again. Too much, too much.

        “Well.” His lips move against my cheek, his hot, humid breath condensing against my skin. “I am-” a soft nip on my neck, just below where jaw meets earlobe, and my breath hitches- “half-human-” he sucks hard on my neck; that's going to leave a mark and _oh_, that noise was _obscene_\- “as you recall.”

        “You _definitely_ got the proper halves.” I'm dizzy, and we've barely even started. Maybe I am a little sick after all.

        _Barely even started?_ I ask myself. _Who are you to say where this is going to finish?_ Pushing too hard, too hard. I'm suddenly afraid that maybe I _am _forcing this, without even meaning.

        “Spock?”

        “Mm?” Apparently it's hard to speak when your mouth is currently occupied with sucking on my earlobe.

        “Are you sure this is... I mean, are you sure you want this?”

        He pulls away and looks at me. “Jim.” Sometimes the way he says my name makes it sound like 'idiot'. Maybe I can get away with 'endearing idiot' if I'm lucky.

        “I just you don't want you to do this just because I've wanted you to.”

        “I wasn't aware that you had. I shall keep it in mind.” His mouth promptly returned to its previous activity.

        “Jesus Christ.” Scandalous, Mr. Spock. Scandalous. I think I'm in love.

        Something suddenly occurs to me – much delayed, but there are mitigating circumstances. Circumstances like Spock's hand, which has suddenly decided to grip my waist and pull me hard against him. “Spock... are you still _studying_ me?”

        “Mmm, yes. Do you object?”

        “No but this takes your whole observation thing to an entirely creepy new level.”

        “That does sound like objection.” He pulls away again.

        “No, goddamn it!” This man drives me crazy, and now I'm really beginning to think that he does it on purpose. He's doing that little smirk again. It's my final invitation. If he wants to get rid of me now he'll have to do that nerve pinch thing on me again. I give a frustrated groan and press my lips hard against his, bringing my hands up to tangle in his hair (so _soft,_ God I love Vulcans – I've just decided this, just now), and I don't know why I didn't realize before but it strikes me suddenly that he smells amazing. Warm and sweet and decidedly Vulcan. I wonder if they emit pheromones. If they do then they're definitely working.

        My mouth decides to wander up Spock's cheekbone (hot, green-flushed, magnificent) to his ear, where I tongue the cartilaginous whorls, and I'm pleasantly occupied with sucking that lovely pointed tip when his thumb brushes lightly but intentionally across my nipple through my shirt and I hear myself release a shuddering exhalation.

        “I see. You are particularly sensitive there.” His breath caresses me and his voice is low. I can feel it thrumming in his chest. Another swipe of a thumb and my head falls back, one hand still tangled in his hair, the other tightening around his waist. Spock is a tease – who knew? Uhura, I suppose, but I'd rather not think about that just now, thanks. She's a wonderful girl, but apparently I can sometimes be a jealous guy. Another entry on the list of things about myself that I wasn't really aware of 'til now.

        I'm brought back to the present (Lord knows how I ever left it) by a hand tugging insistently at the hem of my shirt. Well damn. I don't need to be told twice. I step away and demonstrate the patented Jim Kirk method for removing your shirt in one swift movement (oh yeah, it's impressive as hell) before he hooks a long finger through one of my belt loops and tugs me back to him.

        “I suggest that we move to the bed. It will be of greater practicality and comfort.” Be still my beating heart.

        “God, Spock, I love it when you talk dirty to me.” I'm rewarded with a disapproving eyebrow raise and I can't help but grin. “All right, all right. Suggestion duly noted, Mr. Spock. Consider the order given.”

        I wasn't really expecting him to carry me but I gotta say, his strength is kind of a turn-on. Okay, it's a huge turn-on, I admit it. James Kirk likes being carried around like a little girl. Just don't tell anyone or I'll have to hunt you down and beat you with sticks. Multiple. (Saying so makes my masculinity feel better, anyway.)

        He deposits me on the bed and promptly sits on me, straddling my hips. Oh boy oh boy. “You. Shirt. Off. Now.” I point at the offending article. “Or else.”

        “Or else what?” Eyebrow raise.

        “I hadn't thought about it. Shirt off. Please.”

        And off it comes. My God. Spock is lean but not skinny; rather lithe and graceful. His chest is lightly smattered with hair, which is unexpected but far from unpleasant. Evidence of his half-human ancestry. The trail of hair that runs from his navel down into his pants is also unexpected and incredibly touchable, I discover. His muscles jump under my fingertips and his eyes close, long lashes resting together. I think they're amazing. For some reason I feel I should say so.

        “Your eyelashes are amazing.”

        Spock's eyes open slowly and he does that little smirk again. “Are you _studying_ me, Captain?” he asks, in a better imitation of myself than I'd care to admit. Damn.

        “Oh shut up.” I try very hard to look grumpy, and probably fail miserably but to my credit it's pretty hard to be irritable when you have a beautiful half-naked Vulcan sitting on you.

        Spock does shut up, and shuts me up too, by pressing his torso flat against mine and kissing me again. He doesn't even bother to extend his legs, bending in half like it's nothing. I certainly didn't know he was that flexible. For some reason it's ridiculously sexy. It also means I can grab his ass with wonderful ease, and of course I do so. The flesh is firm, hot as the rest of him, and when I pull our groins together I hear his breath shudder and I groan. The friction is delicious but my pants are too tight and I need to feel some skin before I go mad. I tug at the waist of Spock's pants and try very hard not to whimper.

        He pulls away, kneeling above me, and I take the opportunity to slide to a sitting position and let my lips explore his chest. He shivers under my tongue and I realize he must be cold, that in fact he must find my skin and my mouth cold just as I find his hot. “Do you want me to raise the temperature in here?” I ask his nipple. The nipple says yes but Spock indicates that the current level of climate control is acceptable.

        “That's not what your chest is saying,” I inform him.

        “It is confused,” he tells me, sounding rather amused. I decide to tongue his navel and he gasps. He's got the fly of his pants open now but no room to remove them, so I clamber awkwardly out from underneath him both to give him space and to allow myself the opportunity to remove my own. He stills my hand on the button, though. I look up, questioning, and see that he's got his trousers off completely now. He's wearing practical Starfleet-issue boxer-briefs, but they fit him like a second skin. I can see the hard ridge of his cock and I swallow hard. He kneels in front of me suddenly, all long skinny legs and perfect grace, and undoes my pants with his tongue.

        “Jesus Christ, Spock.” My voice is shaky.

        “Vulcan tongues,” he explains, pausing to catch the zipper between his teeth and tug it down slowly, “are stronger and more dextrous than those of humans.”

        “I suppose if you got it you might as well use it,” I say, feeling fuzzy and stupid.

        “Indeed.” He hooks his fingers through my belt loops and pulls straight down sharply, and there go my pants. They pool on the floor and I step out of them. Some part of me is mildly annoyed that I'm getting undressed so soon after having dressed myself. It is a very small part and it is squished by much larger parts. Parts like my cock, the place where my brain is going. Has gone.

        Any parts of my brain that _were_ left in my head quickly vacate the premises as Spock palms my cock, then tugs my underwear down too and touches the tip of that magnificently agile tongue to the slit then pulls away, drawing a string of precum with him. He looks thoughtful, curious. “Interesting. The taste is not entirely as I'd expected.” Everything in me tightens and throbs.

        “Spock...” my voice sounds raw and not my own. I want him so badly I can hardly stand it. I want to feel him, to make him lose control. I tangle my fingers in his hair (so glossy, it reminds me of lacquered wood) and tug upward, once, twice, gently, encouraging him to stand. When he does I hook my fingers under the band of his underwear and pull them gently away and down, slowly, admiring him. He has a dark tuft of pubic hair, finer than a human's, soft-looking. His cock is erect (wish I'd known when that happened, though I might have had an aneurism), moss-green, with the characteristic double ridges just below the head. It is fully extended but the flesh around the base is thick, muscular; indications of its usual retracted state. Generally it would be drawn back inside his abdominal cavity, away from my probing eyes and hands. I'm very glad it isn't.

        He produces more precum than I do; I don't know if it's just him or if it's a Vulcan thing but my hands quickly grow slick with it. I note that his fingers are still skirting lightly over my flesh, even as his head falls back, mouth open, cheeks flushed green, eyelids fluttering. It's amazing, even this tiny, soundless loss of control, and it only makes me want him more. I catch one of my hands, run my fingers along his in a Vulcan kiss, and he gasps, lowering his head to stare at me, eyes wide and dark. Slowly, looking directly at him, I take the tip of his forefinger lightly between my lips, watching his nostrils flare and his mouth go slack as I draw the finger slowly in, laving it with my tongue. The sensitivity of Vulcan hands is not unknown to me, and I tend to exploit it fully.

        Spock actually _whimpers,_ or at very least that's the best word I can think of to approximate the sound – impatient, high, strange – and my pelvic muscles tighten. Just that single sound can send a shock of pleasure running through me. Good God. I scrape my teeth lightly over Spock's finger before drawing it in again and sucking, hard. He comes damn near moaning, breath coming in short little gasps, and I draw his body towards mine, pressing our cocks together with my free hand. It's the most amazing things I've ever experienced, sharp little shocks of pleasure tingling through me, and Spock is nearly panting when I release his finger.

        I don't expect the growl, or the teeth clamping down on my earlobe, or him lifting me and damn near throwing me back on the bed, but I assure you I'm not complaining. He kneels between my legs and his fingers fumble impatiently at my entrance, which is getting a little weird for me, seeing as I've never done this before, but it's far from unpleasant.

        “I require-”

        “Top drawer,” I blurt out, squirming under his touch as he fumbles in the drawer behind him for the bottle of lubricant I keep stashed there. He presses his thumb against my perineum and I hum with pleasure, arching my back involuntarily. Too amazing.

        Not too much of that passes before a slick, hot finger is pressing itself against me, massaging the muscles into relaxation. When it slips in after a long while inside the sensation is sudden, and I gasp, but it's not unpleasant, though extremely strange. I've never even tried this on my own, but suddenly I _want_ it, more than anything in the world, and I push back, forcing him deeper, gritting my teeth (which actually hurts more than his finger penetrating me, which in its own right doesn't really hurt at all, though I'd expected it to). “Slowly,” he breathes, crooking the finger and rubbing it against my prostate. I yelp. Good God, what have I been missing? He bites his lower lip and I realize this must be stimulating those sensitive Vulcan hands of his too. The thought makes my cock twitch.

        “Spock, I want you,” I whine, squirming. He holds my hips still with his free hand, grip strong.

        “Patience,” he breathes, shakily, teasing my prostate again, making me gasp.

        His hand leaves my hips just as a second finger slips in with the first; initially just the tip, deeper and deeper with a rocking motion that makes me moan incoherently, mind ablaze with incoherencies. The strangeness and the pleasure combined with my arousal have overwhelmed me, but I still need more.

        When the fingers leave me and Spock shifts his hips I realize what that free hand must have been doing. He aligns himself, leaning over me and supporting his weight on one arm, and pauses. I give a frustrated groan. My head's thrown back and I'm trembling with anticipation and I'm sure my hair's a mess and I must look wanton as fuck but I don't care. And, and, and. And _do it._

        “Are you certain?” he asks me, looking me straight in the eye.

        “Oh, you tease,” I say, grabbing at his hips and tugging, “You fucking tease, _fuck you,_ what do I have to do? Do you want me to beg you?”

        “The idea is appealing, but unnecessary.” Suddenly he's pushing in, slowly, slowly, and it's _too much_ and _just right_ at the same time. His face is impassive except for the tiniest flutters of his eyelids, and I suddenly become aware of just how tenuous his control is right now, and just how great his need to be careful, to do this _right._ I don't want him to worry.

        “Spock, you don't have to... you know. I can handle it.”

        “I don't know what you mean,” he says through gritted teeth. I grasp his chin and draw his face down to mine, lipping his mouth with each word that comes out of mine while he pants against me:

        “I mean that you don't have to be careful. You don't need control, not with me. I want to make you lose yourself. I want to drive you mad. I want you to fuck me as hard and as crazy as you want to, because you can't help yourself, because you need it. Because I need it too.”

        The sound Spock makes is strangled, and while it gives me some indication of his intentions it still doesn't prepare me for the teeth that bury themselves in my lower lip, the hands that grip my hips, lifting them, or the sharp thrust that buries him in me to the base. It _hurts_ and it's _wonderful _and I'm beginning to understand what every girl who as ever asked me for a rough fuck was on about.

        I come to understand fully when that thrust is followed by another and another and he's _so hot_ around me and inside me and when his fingers clamp around my neck I toss my head back and let them, knowing they won't tighten. This time they're here to save, not to hurt. I'm forced into an awkward arched position, half-strangled by the weight behind Spock's palm, and already beginning to get sore but it's still the hottest sex I've ever had. With each thrust the head of his cock and the double ridges beneath it push against my prostate, and bizarre pleasure wells in my pelvis. My arms find the will to rise from where they've lain languid against the bedsheets and tremblingly explore Spock's body, running over his shoulders, across his chest, teasing a nipple here, grasping a collarbone there, digging into firm ass.

        Suddenly Spock's hand leaves my neck and equally suddenly it palms my cock and his mouth is everywhere, nipping none too lightly, tonguing, sucking. His forefinger teases at my slit and we both groan. I can only imagine what that slippery stimulation must feel like to his wonderful Vulcan fingertips. They say the nerve concentration there is similar to that in a human female's clitoris, and it accommodates both touch-telepathy and seriously mindblowing sex.

        Spock's hand starts jerking me off, rough but wonderful, until I grasp his hand with my own, stilling it.

        “Spock, I wanna... I want you to...” I touch my forehead and my cheekbone and he gets the message, his eyes widening.

        “That is, as you say, perhaps taking this a bit far.” His voice is surprisingly steady considering the ride he's giving me.

        “You've been in my head once before. I want you in there now. I want it to be good this time, for both of us.”

        He seems to consider for a few more thrusts then, not once breaking his rhythm, he releases my cock and presses his fingertips to the psi-points on my face. Familiar words. My mind to your mind. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

        A strange rush and suddenly I'm two people. The meld is tenuous; clearly Spock doesn't want to delve too deep, not this time around, and I'm not pushing the matter. It's quite enough already. Being fucked and fucking myself at the same time is a really weird experience. It's also ridiculously hot. God. Imagine coming like this. I think I might die.

        _You most certainly would not._ In my head he sounds amused.

        Well fine, but I'd feel like dying.

        _I do not believe that would be the case either. In any case I anticipate you shall find out._

        I hope so. God, I hope so. Being in his head and also in his body I can tell that he won't last much longer. His control is impressive but not limitless.

        _Touch yourself._ It's an order. I obey.

        I can feel a thrumming in my head as the tension we both feel becomes increasingly unbearable. I'm gonna...

        _ Yes._

        The world falls apart and reconsolidates, white-hot, once, as hot spurts of cum splatter on my belly; we can both smell it (_differently_, which is weird, and don't even get me started on how Vulcans see – biochemistry is weird stuff), and then I'm gone away, rocketing up again on Spock's orgasm (which I note with some jealousy is a bit more intense than mine but hey, I'm experiencing it too, so that's cool) as his thrusts become tight and irregular and he stills, shuddering and panting above me. I was noisy as hell. He made not a sound.

        “Man,” I say, shaky and exhausted. That's it. That's all I can think to say. The Spock in my head feels amused. I tell it to go fuck itself.

        Spock lowers his head to gently rest against my shoulder and after a long while basking in the afterglow, we separate and go to shower. I'm stiff and sore in places I never knew I had, and I feel strangely virginal in more ways than just that. I guess in a lot of senses I am.

        Clean and satisfied, I collapse back into bed, beckoning for Spock to join me. He does so carefully and with much more dignity than I managed, laying next to me. I cup the place where his cock has now drawn back into his abdomen, frowning at the strangeness, but pleased. We lay in silence for a while.

        “Jim.”

        “Mmm?” I'm sleepy, sated, but my curiosity is piqued. I wasn't expecting pillow talk.

        “I am curious. While you are undoubtedly in the possession of intelligence and aptitude far above the normal Starfleet standards, you do not... 'seem the type' for Starfleet. Indeed you consistently rebel against regulation and take pride in flaunting that insubordination in the face of your superiors. What was it that made you enlist?” His voice is soft, just on the inside edge of content.

        “I suppose Captain Pike told you that he picked me up in a bar brawl with some of his cadets.”

        “Yes, of this much I am aware.”

        “He challenged me. He'd been trying to get me to enlist by appealing to my intelligence, my boredom, whatever... he knew it wasn't working. I wasn't having any of it. So he said to me, on his way out: 'Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes and he saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's, and your own. I dare you to do better.'” This is said in my very best Pike impression, of course, which isn't very good. “So... I had to try.”

        “I see.”

        “And I succeeded, didn't I? We saved Earth under my command. I'm pretty sure my average of lives saved per minute of captaincy was higher.” James Kirk: 1. Universe: 6 billion. At least I'm catching up. Spock seems like he's not sure whether to be amused or horrified (or the subdued Vulcan equivalents of the above, anyway) that I'm sort of challenging my dead father to a duel of statistics. But it's not just statistics. It's lives, individuals, each one a self-contained universe, and I saved them all. I didn't even have to die in the process. Maybe that seems callous, I dunno. It's not like I'm not grateful. It's just that all my life I've been carrying this even – especially – when I didn't think I was. Now, somehow, it's gone, and I don't see the point in walking on eggshells around the subject anymore. My father is dead. I never met him. We never even touched, not as far back as I can remember and beyond. I don't love him. But I owed him. Now my debt is paid in each of those billions of lives I – we, Spock and I together, and all those men and women on my ship – saved.

        “But Vulcan was lost. Surely that alters the score.” His voice is strange.

        “That wasn't under my command, that was-” He turns away from me. Oh shit. Oh goddamn it. I really am a tactless fuckhead.

        “Spock.” He's silent.

        “Spock, look at me.” I prop myself up on my elbows, looking at him. His head turns slowly. His face is carefully blank and something in my heart shatters.

        “Yes, Captain?” Captain. O Captain my Captain. Don't do this to me, Spock.

        “I wasn't blaming you. God, I never did. You couldn't have changed anything.”

        “I could have held her next to me instead of in front of me. I could have saved one more.” Raw, honest, and heavy with more emotion than even I could have imagined, expressed subtly in careful non-expression, the slightest twitch of the lip, almost imperceptible.

        “I could have taken just that much longer to tell Scotty to beam us back and you. Lost one life. And I'd be doing exactly the same thing you're doing now, and it'd be pointless. It wouldn't bring you back. I couldn't have known. You couldn't have known.” I look at him and my heart simultaneously swells and tightens. “Spock. If emotions aren't logical, then regret is least of them all.”

        There is a long pause. Something suddenly occurs to me. “Spock. I hope you don't think I believed those things I said when I... you know. When I took command.”

        “I have seen no indication that you were insincere, even if you would perhaps not say the same now.”

        “God, no. Saying those things made me feel like shit. I knew they weren't true. That's why I had to say them. If I hadn't...”

        “If you hadn't you might never have broken your father's record. I understand.”

        “No, Jesus, Spock, that's not it. If I hadn't I'd have lost my home, the place I grew up, the people I knew, the people they knew... your mother's planet. The last traces of her left in the universe.”

        Spock looks at me with one elegant eyebrow raised. “I highly doubt that preserving my mother's past was on your list of motivations at the time.”

        I nod. “It wasn't. Not consciously, anyway. But you can't say it's not a nice surprise.”

        “Indeed I cannot.” There's the slightest tightening of his mouth and the corner of his eyes and there, he's smiling at me again. He makes everyone else in my life seem excessively expressive. Oh the extravagance in a grin. The luxury in a frown. And oh, how delicate, how exquisitely succinct, that Vulcan smile. There I go waxing poetic again, but I can't help but think, or at very least hope, that this means we're going to be all right.

        "You know, Mr. Spock... meeting me here, doing this. It's all rather illogical, isn't it?"

        He looks scandalized. "Do you insult everyone you sleep with?" Yeah, we're gonna be okay.

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**P**art 16: in the year of '39 came a ship in from the blue ††  


* * *

    So ends that story. When I told you I knew it best of all, that was definitely true. There are things that you won't find in Starfleet's records, no matter how complete the testimony. It's best to trace down tales to their source. If nothing else the retelling will be more colourful.

    _So what happens next?_ you ask. _Where did you go? What did you do there?_

    That, I'm afraid, is another story for another time, mostly because I'm tired and I have shit to do before I turn in. Only half my motivation is mystery. I will tell you this, though:

    I learned much later that that lonely, icy little planet where this whole fiasco first began is known to the warp-capable locals of that solar system as a place where a man can go to discover himself. I have to say the methods were unorthodox, but highly effective. Maybe, then, if you're a seeker, you'll find something you need in that lost place where the ice masks the truth and the darts expose it. If you survive, as they say, then you will be changed: so go there, traveller, if you wish, but beware. Here be monsters. Here also be wonders. I'm beginning to think that those of us who know the old Vulcan truth that warrior-comrades can fall in love benefit most of all.

    Now good night. Fuck off. Go home. There's nothing more to see here.

 

* * *

† i've heard there was a secret chord  
  that david played, and it pleased the lord,  
  but you don't really care for music, do you?  
  it goes like this:  
  the fourth, the fifth;  
  the minor fall; the major lift -  
  the baffled king composing hallelujah

  hallelujah, hallelujah  
  hallelujah, hallelujah

  your faith was strong but you needed proof:  
  you saw her bathing on the roof;  
  her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.  
  she tied you to a kitchen chair,  
  she broke your throne, and she cut your hair,  
  and from your lips she drew the hallelujah

  hallelujah, hallelujah  
  hallelujah, hallelujah

  baby i've been here before,  
  i know this room and i've walked this floor,  
  you know, i used to live alone before I knew you.  
  i've seen your flag on the marble arch  
  but love is not a victory march,  
  it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.

  hallelujah, hallelujah  
  hallelujah, hallelujah

  there was a time you let me know  
  what was really going on below,  
  but now you never show it to me, do you?  
  and remember when i moved in you  
  and the holy dove was moving too  
  and every breath we drew was hallelujah?

  hallelujah, hallelujah  
  hallelujah, hallelujah

  you say i took the name in vain;  
  i don't even know the name  
  but if i did, well really, what's it to you?  
  there's a blaze of light in every word;  
  it doesn't matter which you heard:  
  the holy or the broken hallelujah.

  hallelujah, hallelujah  
  hallelujah, hallelujah

  i did my best; it wasn't much;  
  i couldn't feel, so i tried to touch;  
  i've told the truth. i didn't come to fool you.  
  and even though it all went wrong,  
  i'll stand before the lord of song  
  with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

  hallelujah, hallelujah  
  hallelujah, hallelujah

  Cohen, Leonard. "Hallelujah". Various Positions. Columbia Records. 1981.

* * *

†† in the year of thirty-nine  
    assembled here the volunteers  
    in the days when lands were few  
    here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn:  
    the sweetest sight ever seen.  
    and the night followed day,  
    and the story tellers say  
    that the score brave souls inside  
    for many a lonely day  
    sailed across the milky seas  
    ne'er looked back, never feared, never cried.

    don't you hear my call  
    though you're many years away?  
    don't you hear me calling you?  
    write your letters in the sand  
    for the day i'll take your hand  
    in the land that our grand-children knew.

    in the year of thirty-nine  
    came a ship in from the blue -  
    the volunteers came home that day,  
    and they bring good news  
    of a world so newly born  
    though their hearts so heavily weigh,  
    'for the earth is old and grey,  
    little darlin' well away,'  
    'but my love this cannot be!'  
    oh so many years have gone  
    though i'm older but a year:  
    your mother's eyes from your eyes cry to me.

    don't you hear my call  
    though you're many years away?  
    don't you hear me calling you?  
    write your letters in the sand  
    for the day i'll take your hand  
    in the land that our grand-children knew.

    don't you hear my call  
    though you're many years away?  
    don't you hear me calling you?  
    all your letters in the sand  
    cannot heal me like your hand:  
    for my life, still ahead, pity me.

    Mays, Brian. Queen. "'39". A Night at the Opera. EMI/Parlophone. 1975.

* * *

447 "By as much as our might may diminish, we will harden our minds, fill our hearts, and increase our courage." "The Battle of Maldon". Old English. Translation not my own. 


End file.
